Cadbury Dairy Milk Silk's 'I Missed You' campaign partnered with Jasleen Royal's Sang Rahiyo music video to reach young couples across India during COVID-19
ARCHIVECadbury Dairy Milk Silk Turns Lockdown Longing Into a Love Song
Cadbury Dairy Milk Silk's 'I Missed You' campaign is a content-led initiative launched in India in September 2020 that partnered with singer-songwriter Jasleen Royal's music video Sang Rahiyo to position the brand's limited-edition Heart Pop bar as the definitive romantic gesture for couples separated by COVID-19 lockdown.
The campaign extends Cadbury Silk's established brand platform, 'How Far Will You Go for Love', which had been building equity among young couples across the country since early 2020. Rather than deploy a conventional television commercial, Cadbury and agency Wavemaker chose to anchor the campaign around a fully realised music video — a piece of content that could travel independently of paid media and embed the brand inside a genuine cultural moment. The limited-edition 'I Missed You' Heart Pop bar, priced at ₹160 per unit, served as the campaign's physical proof point: a product whose very name embodied the collective emotional experience of lockdown separation.
The primary audience is 15–25-year-old consumers in India, a demographic already fluent in streaming music and emotionally invested in the kind of long-distance relationship narrative the video depicts. By commissioning Jasleen Royal — a singer-songwriter whose reputation rests on intimate, emotionally resonant love songs — Cadbury ensured the brand message arrived not as advertising but as accompaniment to genuine feeling. The campaign earns a Clapboard Score of 82 out of 100, reflecting strong creative coherence between product, platform, talent, and cultural timing.
ARCHIVECadbury Dairy Milk Silk occupies a distinct emotional territory within the Indian confectionery landscape. Where the parent Cadbury brand has long used the positioning 'Kuch Meetha Ho Jaaye' to associate chocolate with marking life's moments — a platform active as far back as 2017, as documented by Marketingmind In — Silk operates in a narrower, more intensely romantic register, targeting couples for whom a bar of chocolate functions as a love language rather than a casual treat.
The strategic opportunity in mid-2020 was acute. COVID-19 lockdown restrictions had physically separated millions of young couples across India, generating a reservoir of unexpressed longing that no conventional gifting category could easily address. Wavemaker identified this emotional gap and built the 'I Missed You' Heart Pop bar directly into it, making the product a literal embodiment of the feeling rather than merely a category offering. Karthik Nagarajan, Chief Content Officer of Wavemaker India, described the intent plainly: the team sought to build an association that would capture the essence of the 'How Far Will You Go for Love' message seamlessly, noting that Cadbury Dairy Milk Silk had already evolved into a symbol of love over the years.
The choice of a music video as the primary creative vehicle reflects a broader shift in how Indian brands reach young consumers. Rather than interrupting content, Cadbury chose to become content — a distinction that matters considerably in a market where streaming and social media consumption among 15–25-year-olds is intense. The competitive landscape within Indian confectionery is shaped by global players including Mondelez International's own portfolio alongside rivals such as Nestlé and Ferrero Group, making differentiated emotional positioning at the brand level a strategic necessity rather than a luxury.
Taani Tanvir wrote and directed the Sang Rahiyo music video, with Jasleen Royal serving as producer. The video features Jasleen Royal and Ranveer Allahbadia as a couple navigating the emotional terrain of a long-distance relationship during lockdown. On screen, the two make repeated efforts to keep their bond alive across physical separation — video calls, small gestures, moments of shared memory — while Cadbury Dairy Milk Silk appears not as a product placement but as a recurring presence in their shared good times and as a medium through which they communicate how much they have missed each other. The warmth of the visual treatment and the intimacy of Jasleen Royal's vocal performance keep the brand integration feeling earned rather than imposed.
The production was handled by Little Women Picture Co., grounding the work in a professional filmmaking context rather than the lo-fi aesthetic that some branded content of the period defaulted to. The decision to cast Ranveer Allahbadia — a prominent digital creator with a substantial following among precisely the 15–25-year-old demographic Cadbury was targeting — extended the campaign's organic reach beyond traditional media channels. His presence gave the video credibility within the creator economy while Jasleen Royal's songwriting gave it cultural legitimacy as music.
The result is a piece of branded content that functions simultaneously as a Jasleen Royal music release and as a Cadbury Dairy Milk Silk campaign asset. This dual identity — genuine song, genuine story — is the craft achievement at the heart of the execution. Wavemaker's Karthik Nagarajan described Jasleen Royal as the ideal choice to bring the brand's messaging alive, citing her reputation for soul-stirring love songs as the decisive factor in the collaboration.
The Sang Rahiyo music video accumulated 110,273,582 views on YouTube, alongside 896,460 likes, according to verified performance metrics supplied with the campaign record. These figures position the video well beyond the reach of a standard brand film and place it among the more significant branded music releases in the Indian confectionery category during 2020.
The scale of that viewership reflects the structural advantages of the campaign's format. A music video has an inherent reason to be watched and shared that a product advertisement does not. When the content is built around a singer with Jasleen Royal's existing fan base, and features a digital personality in Ranveer Allahbadia with his own committed audience among young Indians, the distribution multiplier is built into the creative rather than purchased entirely through media spend. As reported by buzzincontent.com and passionateinmarketing.com, the campaign generated significant coverage across Indian marketing and entertainment media at the time of launch, amplifying its reach further.
No verified data on direct sales uplift for the limited-edition Heart Pop bar or on brand equity movement during the campaign period is publicly available. What the view count does confirm is that the content achieved genuine cultural penetration in India — not merely paid delivery — and that the 'How Far Will You Go for Love' platform proved capable of generating organic engagement at a moment when audiences were emotionally primed to receive exactly this kind of message.
The 'I Missed You' campaign is a September 2020 Cadbury Dairy Milk Silk initiative in India that centred on singer Jasleen Royal's music video Sang Rahiyo, produced with Wavemaker India. It promoted a limited-edition Heart Pop bar priced at ₹160, targeting 15–25-year-olds navigating long-distance relationships during COVID-19 lockdown.
Taani Tanvir wrote and directed the Sang Rahiyo music video. Jasleen Royal served as producer, and the video was produced by Little Women Picture Co. The collaboration was brought together by Wavemaker India on behalf of Cadbury Dairy Milk Silk, and was published in India in September 2020.
Singer-songwriter Jasleen Royal and digital creator Ranveer Allahbadia appear in the Sang Rahiyo music video. The two portray a couple maintaining their relationship across lockdown-enforced distance, with Cadbury Dairy Milk Silk featured as a recurring presence in their shared moments and as a symbol of affection.
The Sang Rahiyo music video received 110,273,582 views on YouTube, alongside 896,460 likes, according to verified performance metrics for the campaign. These figures reflect the video's success as a piece of standalone content that reached Indian audiences far beyond the scale of a conventional branded advertisement.
The campaign extends Cadbury Dairy Milk Silk's 'How Far Will You Go for Love' brand platform, established in early 2020. This positioning frames Cadbury Silk as a romantic gesture rather than a confectionery product, targeting 15–25-year-olds in India and encouraging couples to express love in meaningful, effortful ways.
Wavemaker India created and delivered the 'I Missed You' campaign for Cadbury. Karthik Nagarajan, Chief Content Officer of Wavemaker India, led the strategic approach, identifying Jasleen Royal as the ideal collaborator to embody the brand's romantic messaging and overseeing the integration of the Heart Pop product into the Sang Rahiyo music video.
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