Cadbury set to reveal 2012 Olympics sponsorship ads

Cadbury is leveraging its sponsorship of the London 2012 Olympic games to launch a £50m marketing push – its biggest ever – that aims to get the nation playing games, but there won't be a chocolate wrapper in sight.

Seven years ago when Cadbury last attempted such a major association with sport, the ill-fated Get Active! campaign that encouraged children to eat chocolate in order to collect and redeem vouchers for school sports equipment, the company came in for heavy criticism. Reverberations continued more than a year after the push was scrapped, with the then public health minister Melanie Johnson saying: "I hope we do not see similar initiatives again, frankly."

There was some surprise when the company chose to stick its neck out again with a £20m-plus sponsorship of London 2012, as the "official treat". Olympics chief Paul Deighton was forced to defend the sponsorship for an event associated with the battle against childhood obesity.

Cadbury's response, after two years of careful planning, will be unveiled next Saturday night in a TV campaign developed by the agency Fallon and Cadbury's now departed marketing director Phil Rumbol - a partnership that produced well-known ads such as the drum-playing gorilla and "Eyebrows" - and it represents the most unorthodox Olympics marketing the public will see.

The ads feature two teams of cute, Finding Nemo-style marine creatures, divided into those who have spots and those who have stripes, who play a game involving seaweed balloons. At the end, viewers are urged to go to a website, www.spotsvstripes.com, to join a team and compete in any real-life game they like – from tiddlywinks to crazy golf and keepy-uppy – and to build up national totals online for each side.

"The thinking behind the campaign is that Cadbury has a rich history as a pioneering and philanthropic brand, they made life better for their workers with Bournville [the company built the village for employees]," says Hugh Cameron, the chief strategy officer at PHD which planned and bought the campaign's advertising. "The idea here was how to use the Olympics as a lever to put the spirit of play back into the fabric of national life."

Cadbury maintains that the campaign is for all ages. However, the initiative is described as taking people back to the time where "games only stopped when your mum called you in for your tea".

There is praise from within the industry for the company's handling of the subject. "I like the fact that … they are about having a bit of fun, the official treat of the games, it is very smart," says Tim Crow, the chief executive of Synergy Sponsorship. With millions of young eyes trained on the London Olympics and the mascots Wenlock and Mandeville, created by the marketing agency Iris, designed to promote physical activity, Cadbury's tie-up is likely to draw criticism, however.

Christine Haigh, the co-ordinator of the Children's Food Campaign, said that the Olympics is a great opportunity to inspire the UK's children to adopt healthier lifestyles, adding that she was "sceptical that their sponsorship will help".

When Cadbury signed the Olympics sponsorship deal a spokesman said that it was "entirely appropriate" that the biggest sports event that Britain has seen was supplied with British confectionery: "It would be odd to find only foreign chocolate from foreign companies at the venue," he said.

While Cadbury is still a quintessential British brand there are a few holes in that argument now that the deal is to the benefit of its new US parent company, its former rival Kraft.