By the 1980s, Cadbury were on a roll with TV advertising. Success followed success – think of the Caramel Bunny, Fry’s Turkish Delight’s mysterious desert maidens and the 1983 national advertisement of Wispa.
Character actress Miriam Margolyes provided the dulcet tones of the animated Cadbury Caramel Bunny, who mesmerized her friend Mr Beaver, suggesting he ‘Take it easy with Cadbury’s Caramel’.
Wispa used the power of celebrity to create impact: Paul Eddington, Nigel Hawthorne, Victoria Wood, Julie Walters, Peter Cook, John Le Mesurier and Arthur Lowe were some of the comedians and comic actors who talked about it in a series of ads. A teaser campaign in the press asked ‘Have you heard the Wispa?’ – but didn’t divulge that they were ads for a new chocolate bar.
Cadbury Creme Egg’s long-running campaign ‘How do you eat yours?’ began in 1985, and over the years featured zodiac signs, Spitting Image puppets and the comedian Matt Lucas.
And there was something else that helped get the Cadbury name into the forefront of people’s minds. Factory tours had long been popular, but it was impossible to run a factory smoothly if it had thousands of visitors. In 1988 Cadbury began planning a visitor attraction to take the place of the factory tours – Cadbury World.