The Wispa Gold launch was a major stage in the Wispa story, following the highly successful re-launch of the classic ‘blue bar’ (straight into the top spot as the best selling ‘single’). On the surface, it was about the limited edition re-launch of a much-loved variant, Wispa Gold. In reality, it was the story of the UK’s first user-generated poster campaign, donated by a brand that genuinely values its fans (after all, we have them to thank for its return!).

For the launch of the original Wispa the fans were given the TV ad. This time Cadbury gave them the whole campaign. 

Cadbury wasn’t looking for people to create adverts for them. Instead Wispa fans could use the posters to broadcast their special messages to the world.  The campaign was not seeking people who could beautifully design a great ad, but people who had a heartfelt message to share with the people important to them. 

In total, 2,888 different poster panels were made available for 913 Wispa fans to broadcast their own individual special message.

In effect the campaign created 913 mini-campaigns each capable of delivering both PR and WOM. The talkability and PR-impact of the messages was massively increased because these were not adverts, but human interest stories with the potential to make us smile.

Clusta were tasked with the design and build of the Wispa Gold Messages website, competition mechanic, Facebook application and digital advertising content.

Clusta developed and built wispagoldmessages.com, the online home for the campaign. Fans simply needed to log-on and submit their message and then wait to see whether the Wispa Gold Panel (four Wispa fanatics) would deem it special enough to be put on a billboard. 

Digital was also key to the recruitment phase. It allowed us to 1: Directly recruit huge volumes of messages, 2: Inspire engaging message content, and 3: Make the campaign feel relevant. 

Facebook was central to the return of Wispa and it again formed a base for Wispa Gold Messages. We already had 270,000 Wispa fans, but we needed to broaden this. So we used Facebook to re-ignite fan interest, and generate buzz and exposure to the campaign.

As a means to drive awareness, MSN allowed Wispa Gold to access the biggest and most used placements on the web and give the campaign the high reach it required. In partnership we developed a way to submit entries in their most popular means of communication – MSN Messenger. We developed an exclusive application with Microsoft that explained the campaign and let people co-create messages with their Messenger contacts. 

To make this even bigger and to take the campaign to the wider MSN community we took over the most relevant MSN channels: ‘Celebs’, ‘Movies’ and the ‘Today’ page.

The MSN application alone reached over 120,000 people who used the application and over 80,000 (66%) passed it to a friend. We had over 7,000 messages submitted for our panel’s approval.

Facebook activity was hugely successful, almost doubling the Wispa fan base to a staggering 520, 000 people.

Wispa Gold Messages achieved what it set out to do – broadening reach while standing out and improving Wispa brand preference during the campaign.