Blogging for Bournville

Dipping a tentative toe into the chocolate fountain of targeted marketing 

On Thursday night I attended a social event organised for Cadbury by creative agency PHD.  All the attendees were bloggers, with the possible exception of me.  The event was part of Cadbury's "Spots v Stripes" campaign to stir up some competitive spirit in Britain ahead of the Olympics, so we each played seven timed games and tried to smash some world records.

Getting the housekeeping out of the way, I suppose I should say Northfield, Illinois instead of Bournville, since Cadbury's historic link with West Midlands quaker philanthropy is now about as strong as Paris Hilton's.  I also shouldn't mention chocolate - Cadbury is the official "treat" provider for London 2012, so "chocolate" and "sweets" are frowned upon and must be expurgated with extreme prejudice.  Anyway.  On the night, we enthusiastically stacked coins, threw teabags, doodled, unrolled toilet paper, clicked, scrolled and made beds.  In true Olympic tradition, our deity-like efforts were fuelled by a free bar, free finger food, and free TREAT-filled goody bags.  A rigorous regime of blood and urine testing also helped to get us all in the mood.

I was atrocious. I stacked my 25 tuppences like a hook-handed blind man on a bouncy castle (52 seconds, fourth among our team of four).  I aimed teabags at cups as if my inaccuracy was performance art, and disconsolately discarded my last batch of ammo in a contemptible gesture of unsporting petulance (disqualified).  My doodle looked like a protest against the constraint of having to stay within the lines (disqualified).  The toilet roll spun flamboyantly out of my fumbling hand and nailed a spectacular gymnastic landing (disqualified).  I was a disgrace to team Spots and I knew I had a lot of making up to do.

Fortunately, the next two games were played on computers.  Even more fortunately, we didn't have time for me to find a way of being disqualified from bedmaking.  Suddenly my lack of aptitude for any practical task became less of a handicap.  I closed 20 windows in 9.5 seconds, and dragged some sort of cartoon starfish along a TREAT-coloured racetrack in 11.73 seconds.  I won both games and was awarded £200 of John Lewis vouchers.  21.23 seconds well spent, even if I'm pretty sure the vouchers won't be.

I guess we focused on 'faster' on Thursday - given how successful it was, my fingers are firmly crossed that there might yet be future 'higher' and 'stronger' -themed events to tick off the other parts of the Olympic motto.  We had a fabulous time whether losing or winning - the guys at PHD were great fun and the games were very well chosen.  The goody bags were fantastic too (deluxe Addict-A-Balls!).  The only downside is that PHD have threatened to send each of us a personalised video compilation of our performances.  I might post mine here, but - just like the Beijing 2008 opening ceremony - I can't promise that it won't be heavily edited to cast me in a more favourable light.  Watch this space.