Marketing boosts Cadbury profit

Wed, 25 Feb 2009

Cadbury, owner of the Dairy Milk brand, says an increase in marketing spend helped boost sales by 6% last year.

The confectionary company says marketing investment rose £97m last year to £584m, up 10.8% as a percentage of sales.

Revenues hit £5.4bn, up from £4.7bn in 2007, which helped push pre-tax profit up to £400m, from £254m a year earlier.

The company’s three biggest brands, Dairy Milk, Trident and Halls, increased 11%, it says, with Dairy Milk growth led by a “good performance” in the UK.

Cadbury has launched a series of Fallon-created Dairy Milk ads over the last 18 months starting with the highly acclaimed “Gorilla” campaign followed by “Airport Trucks” and most recently “Eyebrows”, which shows a brother and sister demonstrating a range of eyebrow dance moves to the sound of “Don't Stop the Rock'” by electro-funk act, Freestyle

Todd Stitzer, chief executive of Cadbury, says the “relative resistance” of its business model pushed growth last year and although the company is not immune to the global economic downturn it expects to deliver revenue growth at “the lower end” of its 4-6% goal range this year.