Cadbury Dairy Milk: when chocolate won’t melt, there’s a problem

For a quick dessert, I sometimes make shortbread and spread chocolate on the top soon after I take it out of the oven.

A few weeks ago, I thought using our Cadbury Dairy Milk Easter Egg would be a good choice for the shortbread topping.

However, it would not spread, which was strange, because the shortbread was straight out of the oven. This was the first time I’d had this problem.

I put the shortbread with the chunks of Dairy Milk in the oven at 170° C. That is roasting temperature.

Fifteen minutes later, the Dairy Milk still hadn’t melted.

We ate the shortbread as is, a real disappointment, especially as the chocolate fell off most of it.

A few days later, I recalled seeing what seems to be an impossible recipe for another Dairy Milk product: Creme Egg Brownies (picture at the link). It looks amazing — perfect for those with a real sweet tooth.

Revisiting the brownie recipe and recalling my shortbread experience, it became clear that today’s Dairy Milk is not meant to melt. I’ve never seen a chocolate that didn’t melt. Something is very wrong.

Investigation online revealed that other British consumers have found Dairy Milk no longer melts. The shape and size of the small bars sold in the UK have changed for the worse. The new formulation doesn’t seem to have the same lingering, satisfying taste as before. Mumsnet explored this in detail (strong language alert) as have Independent readers. The British Problems forum also picked up on the changes.

I hope Kraft — Cadbury’s owners since 2010 — are happy with the way they have ruined an iconic British brand and one of the most satisfying treats ever.

The USP — unique selling point — of Dairy Milk was that it was made with a glass and a half of fresh milk. This is how it was marketed in the early 20th century to mothers who worried that it might not have much nutritional value. Cadbury promoted the wholesome milk aspect. The rest was history.

How times have changed. Now there is a move to remove the images of the milk from the packaging altogether. This is Dairy Milk heresy.

Before looking at that, however, Cadbury lovers need to be aware of the new Mondelez International.

In October 2012, Kraft Foods Inc. changed its name to Mondelez International. Kraft Foods Group was spun off to shareholders.

In March 2012, Marketing Week explained the name (emphases mine):

Kraft will name its global snacks business Mondelez when it splits into two organisations later this year.

Mondelez will be the corporate brand name behind consumer brands including Oreo, Cadbury, Milka, Trident and LU.

It was created following a crowdsourcing project that invited employees from around its global businesses to suggest names for the new business. It says that Mondelez was inspired by two separate suggestions – one from Europe and one from North America.

‘Monde’ derives from the Latin word for ‘world’, and “delez” is a “fanciful expression” of ‘delicious’.

Pronounced Mohn-dah-leez, the name has been created to “evoke the idea of “delicious world”, according to Kraft.

… The change is part of Kraft’s plan to divide into a North American grocery business that will retain the Kraft name, and a global snacks business under the new name.

In October 2012, Marketing Week reported that Mondelez:

plans to partner “power brands” with mobile startups and entrepreneurs.

The programme, dubbed Mobile Futures, will pair Mondelez’s “power brands” – such as Oreo, Trident and Ritz – with startups to scale existing mobile products and incubate new projects, each within 90 days.

The company is particularly looking to partner with startups working across social TV, m-commerce and SoLoMo (social/location/mobile).

I then ran across the Cadbury Dairy Milk Report, headed by Maria Jose Serres (a loyal Dairy Milk consumer? — one wonders). Perhaps this is part of Mobile Futures, which, let’s be honest, sounds like it is marketing and advertising done on the cheap. Anyway, Serres writes — note the spelling errors (underscored):

This is a report for my subject “Marketing Management Communications and Media Management” of MSc Digital Marketing at Southampton University.

The aim of the assigment was to change the slogan “A glass and a half of milk” of Cadbury Dairy Milk, so we had to do market research in order to understan the customers, the competitors, the market trends, etc.
We also had to propose a new slogan and a marketing campaign in UK.
The report has also an analysis of the costs of the campain and the campaing planning.

This is the Dairy Milk heresy.

The hearts of Dairy Milk lovers everywhere will be broken when they read this report. The strapline for this campaign — should it take place — is

A Moment in Every Bite

On page 8, we read

the glass and a half full logo is minimised.

In fact, you can see an illustration of the prototype wrapper which has two pitiful drops bursting from the ‘i’ in ‘Milk’ where the glass and a half of fresh milk used to be. Furthermore, the prototype shows that the ‘k’ kicks the glass and a half into touch.

Is the idea to promote powdered milk content (which is what is in the Cadbury eggs)? Pah.

When can we expect this advertising on buses, street furniture and in cinemas? Page 12 says:

The ‘What’s Your Moment’ campaign launches 1st August 2013 …

Words fail me.

With the exception of the dark chocolate Bournville, which is getting harder to find, I’m finished with Kraft’s Mondelez’s Cadbury.

When chocolate doesn’t melt — powdered milk? — there is a problem.