A few days ago I was publicly dismissive of the Moonfruit social marketing campaign – labeling it as little more than Spam 2.0. In case the readership was concerned that I was curmudgeonly around any forms of social messaging, I thought I’d hand out some congratulations for a “job well done”.

Cadbury chocolate is one of the favorite chocolate brands in Australasia and their Dairy Milk bar is a cultural icon (on a par with Kylie Minogue and Dame Edna). As such it’s a brand to be both cherished and protected.

Of course being a multi national, Cadbury did the opposite and made some changes – the reduced the cocoa solids in the bar, allegedly introduced cheap vegetable fat fillers and downsized the bar by 20%. Feeling slighted, a bunch of Australian chocolate lovers got together and smartly harnessed the power of the social web and created a web presence backed up by a Twitter account and Facebook group.

One of the chocolate lovers group even made an amateur video to further the cause;

One would expect Cadbury to have responded quickly – remember however that they’re a big, bad corporation. Instead it was up to their competition, Whittaker’s Chocolate a family owned and run business with a history of more than 110 years who entered the fray. Whittaker’s made a smart video to highlight the differences between their own bar and that of Cadbury;

So a couple of congratulations – firstly to the chocolate lovers group for spearheading this campaign and secondly to Whittaker’s for responding the right way. And as for the criticisms? Cadbury don’t need that – they’ve already shot themselves in the foot… (oh and if you’ve not tried it before, I recommend Whittaker’s Almond Gold – it rocks!)