The encyclopedia · Advertising & PR · Marketing decision · 2022–2023
Cadbury lent the world's biggest movie star to 200,000 small shops with AI, not ads
Ogilvy Mumbai used deepfake voice and face to put Shah Rukh Khan in personalized ads for thousands of tiny stores, sparking a festival of local celebrating.
Cadbury (Mondelez)
the move
After the pandemic, Indian kirana (corner) stores were crushed while big brands recovered. Ogilvy Mumbai and Wavemaker built 'Shah Rukh Khan-My-Ad' to hand the most expensive advertising asset in the country — a Bollywood superstar — to the shop that could never afford it.
Small business owners typed their shop name and a festival message into a tool that generated a television-ready ad: Shah Rukh Khan's face and voice, recreated by machine learning, delivering a line that names that specific store. The spot was then geo-targeted to customers around it.
Beside restoring the shops' earnings, the campaign carried Cadbury Celebrations boxes into the ad, so the gifting brand rode the goodwill of helping the little guy win during Diwali.
The work let Cadbury align its brand with the emotional core of the festival — small-business revival — rather than simply broadcasting celebrity charm. Local merchants got the reach of a national campaign at zero cost.
why it works
- It transferred a scarce asset (celebrity) to thousands of people rather than concentrating it in a single marquee spot.
- Personalization plus geo-targeting made each ad feel like a genuine individual endorsement, not a template.
- The shopkeeper shared the ad, so a little earned media multiplied reach cheaply.
- The product sat naturally inside the gesture, so brand sales rode the kindness rather than being tacked on.
what transfers
Scale generosity, not just reach. Redirect part of a big brand's media spend to empower small shops that sell its product, turning an ad budget into a network of loyal advocates.
what came after
The campaign helped over 200,000 small stores across India, won the Creative Effectiveness Grand Prix at Cannes Lions 2023, and earned a Titanium Lion the prior cycle. It became a model for 'generosity at scale' that later brands adopted for small-business partnerships.
references
- Ogilvy Wins Creative Effectiveness Grand Prix for Cadbury's 'Shah Rukh Khan My Ad'
- Cadbury's 'Shah Rukh Khan My Ad' small business ad tool wins Creative Effectiveness Grand Prix
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