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Cadbury’s Bournville is back on screens with its first campaign in almost 50 years. It pokes fun at the pretentiousness of the dark chocolate market. With taglines such as “nothing fancy. Or schmancy”, the heritage brand is positioning itself as the smooth dark chocolate that is “made to be enjoyed, not endured”.
Cadbury’s Bournville chopped hazelnut chocolate, £2 for 100g. BUY
Bournville has unveiled new wrappers with a cursive logo inspired by the “B” from the original 1908 packaging and two additional flavours, chopped hazelnut and salted caramel. The brand has also released a comic 90-second film developed with Peep Show’s Simon Blackwell in which two chocolate connoisseurs championing other brands try to outdo each other with tasting notes. Arch one-liners include “this [bar] encapsulates the bitterness of a bad break-up”, “this one tastes like a phobia that hasn’t been named yet” and “the tasting notes on this are ‘gloom’”.
The campaign signals an effort by Cadbury to claim its share of a rapidly growing sector. Dark chocolate accounts for only 7.2 per cent of a £6.4bn UK chocolate market and yet that sector has grown by 21.5 per cent over the past year, according to Nielsen IQ – more than double the rate of the market as a whole.
An automatic Bournville wrapping machine in operation in the factory in 1930 Cottages in the Cadbury village of Bournville
Bournville is named after the 19th-century village founded by the Cadbury brothers under Quaker ideals. Located on the river Bourn, the village’s French-sounding name was adopted – ironically, given the no-nonsense rebrand – because French chocolate was considered the most fancy at the time. Bournville is currently billed by Cadbury as the “number one everyday dark chocolate” in the UK, which pits it against inexpensive own-label brands such as Sainsbury’s dark chocolate rather than pricier “premium” products such as Green & Black’s. The most expensive “craft” category includes small-batch producers such as L’Esterre and Pump Street that source and process their beans with particular care (with beans separated by origin and size for roasting, for instance) and often sell direct to consumer.
A lot of bars still don’t use good cocoa
Chocolate expert Jennifer Earle
“In the UK about 50 per cent of households buy dark chocolate at least once a year compared to other European countries where it’s as much as 80 per cent,” says Cadbury’s marketing manager Michael Moore. “That’s where we see potential for Bournville: people used to milk chocolate who are looking for something more intense – perhaps because their palates have changed as they’ve got older – but are put off by the associations of seriousness and bitterness around dark chocolate.”
A Bournville advert from 1910
Over the past 50 years, the dark chocolate market has evolved in a way that has alienated some consumers, while the sometimes high price point has put it out of reach of the average customer. “Some craft chocolate used to taste pretty poor too,” says chocolate expert and judge Jennifer Earle. “A lot of premium bars still don’t use particularly good cocoa beans and taste bitter at high cocoa percentages. You can grow to like the bitterness, but for most people it’s too intense.”
Bournville wants to be seen as more accessible. Its recommended retail price is £2.20 for a 100g bar. That is roughly equivalent to Cadbury’s Dairy Milk and more affordable than most premium bars at around £3.25 for 100g. Bournville is also considerably sweeter. A 100g bar contains 58g of sugar – more than twice the amount in a 75 per cent cocoa bar. Cadbury Dairy Milk contains 57g. It also contains skimmed milk powder – contrary to the common view that dark chocolate is dairy-free and vegan. “I feel like Cadbury is taking all the halo effects of dark chocolate as healthy without pointing out their dark chocolate doesn’t offer most of those benefits,” says Earle.
“We are confident in the brand, the ingredients and the taste experience,” says Moore of Bournville’s formulation, which hasn’t been changed for the new campaign. He draws a careful distinction between dark chocolate that is “good for [you]” and chocolate like Bournville that is a simply a “me time” treat.
Recommended
I found the plain dark just too sweet and barely recognisable as dark chocolate. The salted caramel bar tasted even sweeter thanks to glucose syrup, sweetened condensed milk and other ingredients; it burned in my throat. The Old Jamaica rum and raisin was boozy as hell. My other half quite liked it. My favourite was the chopped hazelnut, mostly because the nuts masked any cloying sugariness. For all that sweetness, though, the range left a bitter taste in my mouth. It would be nice if everyone had access to good dark chocolate. Bournville isn’t that.
@ajesh34
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