Cadbury apologises to Naomi Campbell

We’ve received the following statements regarding the story we ran last week about Cadbury’s and Naomi Campbell:

From Cadbury:

“Cadbury understands that our latest advertising campaign for Cadbury Dairy Milk Bliss caused upset to Naomi Campbell and her family . Cadbury takes its responsibility to consumers very seriously indeed and we would never deliberately produce any marketing material we felt might cause offence to any section of society. It was not our intention that this campaign should offend Naomi, her family or anybody else and we are sincerely sorry that it has done so.

We can confirm that the advertisement is no longer in circulation and we will not be using it in future marketing for Cadbury Dairy Milk Bliss.

We have been in discussions with Naomi‘s solicitors and can confirm that they have accepted our apology on her behalf as a conclusion to this issue.”

From Naomi Campbell:

‘I’m pleased that Cadbury have made a ‘sincere apology’ in regards to their Bliss ad campaign.

The advertisement was in poor taste on a number of levels not least in the way they likened me to their chocolate bar. It is also a shame that it took so long for Cadbury to offer this apology.

Here I would like to thank Operation Black Vote and the many supporters around the world who simply stated that Cadbury had got this one wrong.

I hope they and other multinationals can learn from this; that offense may not be their intention, but when it is shown that it has caused offense a sincere apology straight away goes a long a way.

Better still they should avoid causing offense in the first place which is best achieved by having greater diversity at board and senior management level’.

Naomi Campbell

From OBV

'The community have spoken and Cadbury have listened and finally apologised for causing offense.

Both here and abroad Black people make up a huge consumer base for Cadbury and their parent company Kraft. Although Cadbury did not intend to insult Black people globally their clumsy advertisement was not a compliment - but quite the opposite.

'I hope this ends this episode and lessons have been learnt'.

Simon Woolley