the back catalogue
Product development has always been important to Cadbury. Many of its products have stood the test of time. There’s a timeline on the Cadbury website showing when some of their long-standing brands were launched.
Case study: Cadbury Heroes
Cadbury Heroes was the biggest and most exciting innovation in the gift market for Cadbury since Cadbury Roses were developed in 1938. The Heroes brand was designed to have a more informal appeal, with a younger consumer profile in mind.
The launch of Heroes in 1999 helped to evolve the "twist wrap" market. "Twist wrap" chocolates are individual chocolates with wrappers twisted at each end.
Development
Formulating recipes for the new products and making the standard bars smaller presented a number of challenges. Over 15,000 miniature units were made by the product developers in order to carry out concepts, wrapping and storage tests and market research. The final miniatures were selected from 200-300 recipes that had been developed.
- New moulds were required for the Cadbury Caramel and Cadbury Dairy Milk miniatures – these had to be tried and tested to ensure that they worked on the manufacturing plant and that the Cadbury Caramel had the correct ratio of caramel and chocolate.
- New ingredients were needed for the Cadbury Fuse and Picnic units.
- Smaller raisins had to be used and different flavours used to achieve an authentic peanut taste in the Picnic units.
- Extra chocolate was needed to cover the Cadbury Crunchie miniatures because if the honeycomb pieces are left exposed they quickly go soft.
The current Heroes assortment includes : Cadbury Dairy Milk, Creme Egg Twisted, Dairy Milk Caramel, Twirl, Eclairs, Bournville and Fudge.
The brand
The brand had to project a sense of "Cadburyness" in a fun and original way. An innovative and contemporary tub was designed, featuring light-hearted "choctoon" characters. These characters were designed to appeal to consumers, and to bring each of the miniature chocolates to life. Each of the “choctoons” reflected the individual brand personalities of each chocolate hero, e.g. Cadbury Caramel – relaxation, Fudge – quirky and cute etc.
After the launch
In order to maintain momentum, a series of special edition packs followed the product launch. A limited-edition Euro 2000 football pack and a 1.5g tub were created, containing new miniatures branded the “new hero in town”.
In 2003, further miniatures were added and the tub was replaced by a 1.5kg round tin and a smaller carton. The formats were chosen because they are used by Roses which the consumer associates with gifting and sharing. The result was a huge increase in sales.
New packaging technology has allowed the chocolate to be wrapped in sealed foil wrappers instead of twist wraps.
