“I said ‘WTF!’ quite a few times in the days following the start of the Unity Bar backlash from other markets,” admits Anil Viswanathan, Mondelez ’s director - marketing (chocolates). Cadbury ’s Unity Bar, a limited edition launch timed around India’s Independence Day, came under heavy fire for ‘woke-washing’. Viswanathan tells us that critics failed to understand that the blended chocolate bar was designed specifically for the Indian market, with a multi-lingual advertising splash in print media that reinforced the message of celebrating diversity.It wasn’t the first soup Cadbury landed in this year. The brand was accused of “stealing” the ‘purple heart’ emoji concept from South Korean pop group, BTS. Cadbury’s Friendship Day campaign, #HeartTheHate, to fight cyber bullying with flurries of purple hearts coincided with a BTS and UNICEF backed global anti-bullying campaign that also uses a purple heart. According to reports, the K-pop super group’s Kim Taehyung coined the phrase ‘I Purple You’ a while ago. He explained the meaning at a fan event: "Do you know what purple means? Purple is the last color of the rainbow. Purple means I will trust and love you for a long time. I just made it up.”“There will always be critics,” says Viswanathan. “The first piece in the anti-bullying campaign showed a girl being bullied by men online. We released the video and we had a bunch of men ranting, “yeh kya hai, always guys are bad.” Two days later we uploaded a video about an obese boy who is bullied and that, too, was trolled.” But then, he adds, it all “kind of died down.”How the company reacted to ‘hate’ directed at the ‘Unity Bar’ makes for an interesting chapter in the 21st Century’s marketer’s playbook, though. Especially at a time when ‘outraging’ is practically a daily affair, marketers are now prescribing a measured approach that also discerns between actual consumer sentiment and overheated social media rhetoric.Viswanathan recalls, “In places where the racism conversation is all about colour, the Unity Bar provoked a totally different debate. So we could see it going in a direction that’s totally different. Because it wasn’t meant for those markets, beyond a certain point we said “let’s not react”. We just watched from the sidelines. Of course, there was panic and conversations across the UK, the US and India. Fortunately, the whole organization felt that it’s in line with our company philosophy. ‘Generosity’ as what Cadbury is forging as a proposition is a part of the overall organization movement toward being more purposeful.”In the UK, Cadbury launched another limited edition chocolate, the “wordless bar”, in collaboration with Age UK to tackle the issue of loneliness among the elderly. All words were removed from packs, leaving just Cadbury Dairy Milk’s glass and milk imagery. The idea came out of research that revealed 225,000 people aged 65 and over go a whole week without speaking to anyone. Proceeds from chocolate sales went to the organization. In South Africa the company set up ‘Little Generosity Shops’ where people exchanged toys for chocolate. The toys eventually made their way to orphaned and vulnerable children. Cadbury Philippines launched ‘Generosity Bars’, made with less milk content, with the line “eat a chocolate, help a child grow”. For every purchase of the specially marked bars, Cadbury provided milk and meals for undernourished kids.Lara Sidersky, Mondelez South Africa lead for chocolate, said in a report, “generosity is a hallmark of the company.” It’s also in the company’s literature, adds Viswanathan, as he reflects on founder John Cadbury’s mission when he established the company and the “pub free” Bournville village in Birmingham, England, which was built around the company’s first factory. Fun fact: Alcohol was sold for the first time in Bournville in 2015. That was after 120 years, precisely.This series of initiatives is meant to reiterate Cadbury’s new brand proposition of ‘goodness and generosity’ articulated as “There’s a glass and a half in everyone”. But for some it’s been hard to digest. In an opinion piece that appeared on the trade site Mumbrella, Australian adman Dan Beaumont cited the Unity Bar case and made a larger point about the pursuit of brand purpose; “Marketers need to sell their products in the most interesting way possible (obviously) but shouldn’t stray too far from core value propositions. It’s a risky strategy to try and cozy up with people’s values, especially when it’s disingenuous.”A bumpy start to the 2019 Indian iterations hasn’t deflated their enthusiasm though. There are many more chapters to come in Cadbury’s 'Kuch achha ho jaye, kuch meetha ho jaye'. The journey began last year with films showcasing moments of generosity. Kicking off with a video featuring two brothers, the company later released a raksha bandhan commercial, films during Diwali and Eid, cricket themed spots about a customer’s act of generosity toward a delivery man, and another piece welcoming back Steve Smith and David Warner during the Indian Premier League.Says Viswanathan, “It’s been a twelve month journey of picking up multiple sets of creatives and that’s one part of establishing the generosity proposition through storytelling. Then it is about ‘storydoing’.” He cites the example of the wish pack, ‘a pack can also give back’. It invited consumers to scan wrappers, get 1GB data free, and gift it to a government school. The company claims that the program funded 20 schools’ annual requirement of data.Aware of the ‘purpose paradox’ and growing cynicism among consumers today, Viswanathan adds that it is “always challenging for a candy brand to stand for a purpose because you look at yourself in the mirror and wonder if you’re just naval gazing.” He adds, “We aren’t saying that life is all sad and here comes Cadbury Dairy Milk to save the day. Obviously we’re not doing all this for charity. We’re doing this for brand building.”