Valentine’s Day is one of the most cluttered moments on the advertising calendar. While most brands rush to celebrate romance, Cadbury has managed to own both ends of the emotional spectrum through Dairy Milk Silk and 5 Star.
Cadbury Silk’s latest Valentine’s Day ad film does what it always does best: it makes you feel something rooted in love, emotion, and cultural insight. Silk campaigns have a way of quietly slipping into people’s hearts. This year, the brand turned its gaze towards our growing reliance on AI, reminding us that while technology can assist us, some emotions can only be experienced in real life. It is unmistakably Silk — warm, honest, and emotionally grounded.
On the other end of the spectrum is Cadbury 5 Star, a brand that has made a habit of poking fun at Valentine’s Day itself. While Silk leans into romance, 5 Star chooses humour. This year, it briefly fooled audiences into thinking it would ‘restore’ Valentine’s Day, only to flip the narrative yet again. Staying true to its irreverent tone, the brand used facts and satire to reinforce its long-standing mission of dismantling the day’s seriousness.
Together, the two campaigns show how Cadbury owns Valentine’s Day from completely different angles. Whether you love Valentine’s Day or love mocking it, Cadbury has something for you. Crafted by separate teams under the long-running Mondelez and Ogilvy India partnership, the consistency with which both brands land their message year after year is hard to miss.
Akshay Seth, Senior Executive Creative Director, Ogilvy (Team Silk), and Karunasagar Sridharan, Executive Creative Director, Ogilvy (Team 5 Star), break down how this year the brands continue to stay culturally relevant without diluting their core identities.
Reinventing Romance with Silk
Q] Cadbury Silk has owned the language of romance for years. How did you crack an emotional territory that feels authentic and not clichéd?
Akshay Seth: Every year, we begin with extensive cultural and consumer scanning along with our planning teams and the client. We ask what feels relevant and what we can genuinely say. This year, the answer was right in front of us. The world is consumed by AI. The more interesting tension was the over-dependence on AI. That naturally fits the Silk space, which is about emotions and matters of the heart. That’s what we wanted to explore this year.
Q] How do you keep refreshing the narrative without losing Silk’s emotional DNA?
Love is the toughest emotion to sell because it has been spoken about endlessly. For Silk, the challenge is not just to connect, but to reinvent how we talk about love while staying true to the brand. The core remains the same: ‘Say it with your heart’ and ‘Say it with Silk’. Around that, we bring in cultural relevance or executional freshness. Sometimes the edge comes from execution, like the Penguin film. Sometimes it comes from culture, like AI this year.
Q] Is there a common emotional thread that runs through all Silk campaigns?
Absolutely. The core is authenticity and vulnerability. This year, that vulnerability was juxtaposed with automation. Technology can do many things, but it can never replace what makes us human. That contrast resonated deeply and stayed true to Silk’s emotional core.
Q] Has design innovation like the Heart Pop and pink packaging impacted sales?
Very much so. Valentine’s Day is a gifting occasion, and Silk’s DNA runs through the product itself. The Heart Pop makes the chocolate feel personal and purposeful. Consumers see it as an extension of emotion, not just a product, which is why it performs so well.
Q] What defines success for Silk’s Valentine’s Day campaigns?
Sales are important, but for a brand built on love, the most important metric is emotional impact. If the campaign tugs at people’s hearts, everything else follows — from brand love to sales.
Destroying Valentine’s Day with 5 Star
On the other end of the spectrum sits Cadbury 5 Star, a brand that has spent years doing the exact opposite. "Destroy Valentine’s Day became an extremely popular campaign,” recalls Karunasagar Sridharan, Executive Creative Director, Ogilvy. “What surprised me was that the people asking about it most weren’t young audiences. They were uncles.”
He added, “As a joke, I would tell them, ‘Don’t worry, I’ll disrupt it so we can destroy it again.’ At that point, it was just a joke. But later, that thought stayed with me. The logical next step felt like taking it one notch higher and making people question why they’re even celebrating it in the first place. That’s how it all came together.”
When a campaign becomes as iconic as last year’s, does it become creatively difficult to refresh it without losing its DNA?
“When an idea becomes iconic, the pressure builds,” Sridharan admits. “But we consciously avoid repeating ourselves. The goal is to surprise, not to recycle.”
The breakthrough came when Sridharan found historical facts about the origins of Valentine’s Day. “It was too good to ignore,” he says.
Q] How would you describe the Ogilvy–Mondelez collaboration, especially for these Valentine’s Day campaigns?
It’s not a traditional client-agency relationship at all. We’re partners in everything we do. When we walk into a 5 Star meeting, everyone knows the goal is to have fun. If we’re laughing in the room, the audience will laugh too.
We don’t take ourselves too seriously. We just try to create work that we genuinely find entertaining. That partnership is the reason these campaigns work the way they do.
Q] Are there any behind-the-scenes moments that stand out?
There are far too many to pick from. The average conversations in our meetings are so absurd that an outsider would be shocked. We’ve discussed everything from which uncles to cast in a film to debating which scientists could help us erase Valentine’s Day — from Neil deGrasse Tyson to Nambi Narayanan.
Q] While Silk embraces romance, 5 Star takes a humorous, anti-Valentine stance. Was this contrast deliberate?
It actually started five years ago, when we had just launched the ‘Do Nothing’ platform. Around Valentine’s Day, we were still figuring out how to use it. Silk already had a very successful campaign running that year, and we thought of simply putting a billboard next to it.
Silk’s line at the time was ‘How far would you go for love?’ and we responded with ‘I’m fine here.’ It felt effortless because both brands were being true to themselves. From that one billboard, the idea evolved and escalated year after year to what it is today.
Q] Do these Valentine’s Day campaigns translate into sales impact for 5 Star?
February is not traditionally a 5 Star month. Many chocolate brands advertise heavily during this period, but thanks to these digital campaigns, February has become an annual spike for 5 Star. The last two years, especially, have seen massive spikes. I don’t remember the exact numbers, but it’s impressive how a campaign for a mass brand can drive such strong sales — not just popularity.
Q] Are there any on-ground activations or outdoor ideas planned this year?
This year, we were tempted, but we made a conscious choice not to do too much. It felt very on-brand to say that we don’t need to do anything, because even the creator of Valentine’s Day skipped Valentine’s Day.
For a brand that stands for ‘Do Nothing,’ that felt like a powerful statement. Why bother celebrating it when even its creator didn’t?
Q] Which of your Valentine’s Day campaigns stand out the most for you?
I like them all for different reasons, but right now I’ll be biased towards the current one. It’s rare in advertising that people actually look forward to a campaign. This year, people saw the teaser, got disappointed, commented saying we’d switched sides, and then felt delighted when the reveal dropped two days later. That journey was very unique and a lot of fun.
