New Cadbury Ad: When Sweet Nostalgia Is Reinvented For The Age Of Equality

Cadbury's cricket ad from the 1990s we forgot we remembered made a grand, reinvented comeback this week and hit a straight sixer. Memories of model Shimona Rashi, dressed in a floral dress, Dairy Milk in hand, and dancing her iconic happy dance on the field after her boyfriend scored the winning run reawoke. Except this time, it was a young man breaking past the security to dance for his bat-wielding girlfriend.

An effortless tweak to the original Cadbury and Ogilvy advertisement and what a world of difference it stands to make! Reimagined for the times, the classic ad now occupies space alongside our nostalgia as a paradigm of the push for gender equality being just as straightforward as it has shown it can be.

The 90s ad was well-loved and uncomplicated. In a way, it perhaps was a bold exhibition of a liberated woman, unafraid of judgment waltzing onto the field like it was nobody's business. All that the new ad does is revisit and readjust without touching the larger format.

It simply asks: What if the gender roles were reversed? Oh heck, why can't they be? It's as possible as it is natural. 

Superimposing the old and new ads, what do we get? An empowering testimony of how far we've come on the road to equality, keeping that priceless nostalgia we so value intact.

Watch both ads here: 

Oh wow!! Take a bow, Cadbury Dairy Milk and Ogilvy :) A simple, obvious twist that was long overdue, and staring right at all of us all this while! pic.twitter.com/Urq8NXtg7W

— Karthik 🇮🇳 (@beastoftraal) September 17, 2021

The New Cadbury Ad: When Screens Speak To People

There are many facets to Cadbury's cricket ad that fall into place as if by some fantastic design. First, that women on the cricket field are not extraordinary occurrences no matter how hard &t=601s">patriarchal belief systems have urged us to think otherwise. Anybody with a cricket bat holds it because they deserve to have it.

Second, the normalisation of a male partner wholeheartedly cheering his other half on in as carefree a manner as women are generally shown to possess. How many men in ads are shown to be genuinely supportive of their partners beyond the hackneyed tokenism no one takes seriously anymore? The new Cadbury's cricket ad overturns that narrative. And all the viewer feels in that moment is pure joy without judgment.

What if the gender roles were reversed? Oh heck, why can't they be? It's as possible as it is natural.

Third, how chocolate comes full circle after decades as a unifier of people across generations and genders. The 90s Cadbury ad was especially marked for shifting perceptions of chocolate from being a kids-only treat to an all-people one. This time, chocolate - that non-serious, delightful foodstuff - comes through to make a fine point on gender.

Clearly, there is power in the way that advertisements carry weight and by being witness to them, their profoundness leaps onto us with hopes for leading us towards change.

Views expressed are the author's own. 

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