Kuch Khaas Hai: the original cricket film

Read the campaign story

Cadbury Dairy Milk’s original cricket film puts an adult’s unguarded happiness at the centre of a chocolate advertisement. A woman watching a match eats Dairy Milk, follows the action anxiously and runs onto the field to dance when the batsman succeeds. The product sits inside a moment of spontaneous pleasure. The film offers a simple permission: enjoying chocolate need not belong only to childhood.

ETBrandEquity’s retrospective interview with Piyush Pandey describes the commercial problem as reaching adults as consumers, rather than only as parents buying for children. The article explicitly dates the film’s launch to 1994 and credits Ogilvy & Mather and director Mahesh Mathai. There is a genuine archival discrepancy: Ogilvy’s own campaign collection labels Cricket 1993. This entry uses the reported 1994 launch year, while leaving that disagreement visible rather than inventing a production-versus-release explanation.

ThePrint’s account describes the woman’s celebratory movement as a defining feature of the creative. The useful mechanism, in my interpretation, is category expansion through behaviour rather than argument. A lecture about why adults may eat chocolate would preserve the sense that permission is required. A recognisable adult enjoying herself presents the behaviour as ordinary and desirable. The cricket setting gives the emotion a clear trigger, so the joy does not need a narrator to explain it.

The imperfect quality of the celebration is also instructive. A polished performance can make happiness look like something reserved for performers. An unselfconscious response gives viewers a less demanding way to see themselves in the scene. A small brand can use that principle without borrowing the film’s dance, music or cricket imagery: identify a moment when a customer naturally relaxes a social rule, then show the product belonging in that moment.

The lesson is not that every brand should tell people to release their inner child. It is to identify a specific inhibition limiting use and depict a credible alternative. The opened sources explain the intended audience expansion, but do not isolate an independently verified sales effect from this one film. Claims about transforming an entire category should therefore remain historical interpretation, not a quantified result attached to this execution.

Find the permission barrier

Ask why an otherwise interested customer feels a product is not for them. Separate social inhibition from price or performance barriers.

Show the new behaviour

Depict someone from the intended audience using the product naturally, rather than delivering a speech defending that use.

Let the emotional trigger do work

Give the celebration a clear cause and preserve believable human detail. Do not confuse emotional polish with credibility.

A small test for another brief

Test a scene that removes one social inhibition around using a product.

Self-identification, willingness to consider the use occasion and brand recall.

Reject any version that shames existing users, misrepresents product suitability or is remembered only for its borrowed cultural imagery.

• Interview prospective users about when the category feels inappropriate for them.
• Storyboard a believable adult using it in an ordinary joyful moment.
• Compare the scene with a direct permission-giving message.