Читать книгу Chocolate Busters: The Easy Way to Kick It! - Jason Vale, Jason Vale - Страница 23

There are even supervised school trips to places such as Cadbury World and Chocolate World. I wish I was kidding, but we actually pay for children to get ‘educated’ about the history of chocolate at this modern-day Willy Wonka fantasy land. This would be fine as the history of anything can be quite educational, but what we are actually paying for is Cadbury’s advertising and emotional hook. The whole tour is one huge marketing ploy aimed at children.

As soon as you enter the make-believe chocolate world everyone is given a couple of ‘free’ Cadbury chocolate bars and halfway round you get another two. On top of that there are plenty of ‘free’ chocolate ‘shots’ throughout the journey. As you continue along the 2–3 hour tour, advert after advert is being beamed into your conscious and subconscious mind – there is even an ‘advert’ stop. This is a place where you can sit and view on large screen, with superb sound effects, the many Cadbury ads that have been shown throughout the decades. One ad which particularly caught my attention was an old Cadbury’s Buttons ad. The picture showed a young mother feeding a child, probably less than one-year old, a Button. Such is the power of conditioning, this may seem perfectly OK in your eyes, but by the time you reach the end of this book you will see just how outrageous it is. The Cadbury World tour also has a kiddie’s ride taking you on a playful journey through ‘Cadabra’ – a chocolate wonderland – in a ‘beanmobile’. On this journey there is an automatic photomaker (similar to the rides at Alton Towers) on which, as you stare at the camera, a caption reads, instead of ‘Say Cheese’, ‘More Chocolate Please’.

The tour is littered with mind-control Derren Brown moments like this and it naturally ends with you arriving at the largest Cadbury chocolate shop in the world! Cadbury World estimated it would have 250,000 visitors during the first 12 months from opening in August 1991 – the actual figure was 400,000! That’s nearly half a million people in a country of only 60 million. Chocolate World in the US saw a massive 2 million visitors in 1996 with each child receiving at least one free bar of chocolate on their tour. As you now know, it’s all about the lifetime value of the customer and the Willy Wonka world of recruiting new punters remains the same as it ever was – get them when they’re young.