Cadbury | Mondelez International
Client
Cadbury is among the most historic brands in the UK. Its chocolate has become part of the fabric of British life, from easter eggs to treats for any occasion. It has become woven into our memories and our seasonal traditions.
Brief
Marking its 200th anniversary, Cadbury's 'My Cadbury Era' is a generative-AI experience that celebrates the brand's deep connection with the British public.
Users uploaded a selfie and selected their ‘Era’ from one of seven classic Cadbury ads, along with options for how they wanted to be represented, and the tool then re-created the poster featuring their likeness. In keeping with Cadbury’s brand positioning of generosity, participants could see themselves in 1 of 7 iconic styles from Cadbury’s history and also automatically entered into a prize draw to win £200.
Beyond this unique personalisation, participants were entered into a £200 prize draw, aligning with Cadbury's generous spirit. The 'My Cadbury Era' tool significantly advanced our capabilities in both AI technology and inclusive design
The approach
At its core, 'My Cadbury Era' aimed to embody Cadbury's generosity by inviting the public to become part of its 200-year story. Moving beyond classic advertising, the campaign leveraged Generative AI to allow users to co-create and reimagine the brand's heritage by placing themselves within vintage Cadbury posters.
My role
As Senior UX Designer for this project, I crafted the user flows, developed wireframes and led the testing and iteration phases before handing off for UI. A rewarding aspect of the work was tackling challenges related to inclusivity and accessibility.
Designing for inclusivity and accessibility
We formed a specialised, cross-functional team from the outset, including technologists, designers, DE&I consultants, and legal experts. This team established four core workstreams: user flow, AI model training, compliance/ethics, and classic visual style integration. We prioritised usability and inclusivity by adopting a simple, selfie-based upload. Legal and DE&I experts concurrently guided us in crafting a safe, respectful, and accessible experience for all.
Generative AI can sometimes show unfair biases. To fix this, we let users choose how they wanted to look in the pictures, picking their preferred skin tone, how they express their gender, and other style details. This gave them control over their own image. Our special AI then took their selfie and put their features into the old Cadbury ads. It made sure the pictures still looked like the old style but also fresh for today. We also had two checks to make sure everything was right. First, a computer program automatically caught any bad or low-quality pictures. Then, a human team looked at anything suspicious to make sure it met Cadbury's rules and was respectful.
Wireframe variations
Hurdles to overcome
A significant challenge was overcoming AI bias, especially in accurately representing diverse skin tones, hairstyles, and facial features. We addressed this by training our AI model on a more inclusive dataset and conducting extensive real-world user testing. This iterative process allowed us to quickly identify and correct any inaccuracies or biases, continuously refining the model for better results.
selfie tool design
Central to the experience was our custom-built selfie capture tool, designed with prompts and guidelines (e.g., appropriate head positioning, adequate lighting, clear facial visibility) to ensure high-quality inputs. Once their image was uploaded, users selected one of seven iconic Cadbury ads, each representing a distinct era in the brand's advertising history.
awards
Shorty Awards, Bronze:
Platforms & Technology: Artificial Intelligence.
This award recognises 'My Cadbury Era,' our generative-AI driven experience for Mondelēz International. The campaign uniquely combined AI and inclusive design to update vintage Cadbury posters with user likenesses, celebrating both modern British diversity and 200 years of the iconic brand.
Traffic User engagement:
Over 77,000 users uploaded selfies, spending an average of over two minutes engaging with the tool. My Cadbury Era.