Cadbury and VCCP Reimagine Legendary Queen Concert with SB Licensing

Cadbury and global creative agency of record, VCCP, have crafted Queen’s iconic bandmates out of chocolate for their latest campaign, ‘All Heroes, No Zeros’, in collaboration with SB Licensing for IP and talent licensing expertise.

Spearheaded by IP expert Sonia Bouadma (formerly vice president, rights services at BENlabs), SB Licensing pairs cultural icons with authentic commercial collaborations, acting as licensing agent for the estates of Marilyn Monroe, Muhammad Ali, Elvis Presley, Charlie Chaplin, Richard Bernstein, Thomas Edison, and the legendary photographic archive, Iconic Images. It also offers a single clearance and licensing solution for projects that entail even multiple rights clearances, including celebrities and icons, film clips, characters, or thematic rights, literary and artistic copyrights, and trademarks, landmarks, and props.

‘All Heroes, No Zeros’ spotlights the UK’s most iconic bands, teams, line-ups and figures across culture, music, history and sport by reimagining them as Heroes chocolates: from Santa’s reindeers to Robin Hood and his Merry Men, the Arsenal Women’s Football Club to Queen, and even characters from ‘Pride and Prejudice’ to celebrate Jane Austen's 250th anniversary.

The campaign leads with a series of high-impact OOH, including Piccadilly Lights, and includes a playful 30” spot released on October 20th.

The spot reimagines the inside of a tub of Cadbury Heroes as a sell-out stadium concert where every person is transformed into a Heroes chocolate. As we fly across the crowd, Heroes versions of rock royalty Queen take to the stage: Freddie Mercury as a Crunchie Bits, Brian May as a Dairy Milk, Roger Taylor as a Dinky Decker, and a Dairy Milk Caramel John Deacon. As the camera pans up and out of the stadium, a Wispa fan finds it all too much, and a Creme Egg Twisted crowd surfs before the voiceover delivers the end line: “The best groups are all heroes, no zeros – like Cadbury Heroes”.

SB Licensing worked in close collaboration with VCCP creatives and was tasked with exploring the licensing availability of iconic IPs across pop culture. The creative team proposed a selection of IPs, while SB licensing proposed additional IP suggestions. In the end, SB Licensing investigated up to 100 ideas of well-loved characters from movies and TV series, iconic music bands, literary and game characters. The project required extensive research, and SB Licensing utilised its deep relationships with studios, talent, and estate representatives to find the perfect IP partner for the client in collaboration with VCCP’s creative, production and business and legal affairs teams.

SB Licensing then approached and negotiated rights with over 30 IP representatives, until the client settled on their chosen IP: the iconic band Queen. The VCCP creative team worked on a selection of creative scripts and materials that truly encapsulated the essence of the band and paid attention to details such as using the official band crest and logo, as well as a faithful miniature replica of Brian May’s guitar.

SB Licensing negotiated the rights and contractual business terms, and secured creative approvals from the band’s representatives before the start of the campaign.

Sonia Bouadma, founder and director of SB Licensing and former vice president, rights services at BENlabs (Greenlight), commented, “We are proud to have been trusted on this campaign, which is a real celebration of craftsmanship: the film was directed by award-winning stop-motion specialist Anthony Farquhar-Smith at Not To Scale (who notoriously worked with feature film directors like Wes Anderson and Tim Burton), in collaboration with VCCP's global content creation studio Girl&Bear.”