Chocolate makes you fat; London 2012 is all about encouraging healthy living and getting everyone inspired to do more sport.
So as the first London 2012-branded Cadbury Dairy Milk bars soon appear on the shelves, people will no doubt start asking questions: How can we responsibly partner with a chocolate company? Surely we're sending out the wrong message? Aren't we just encouraging obesity at a time when it's already such an issue?
Well, you've got to admit, this does look like a bloody stupid link-up. On one hand the London 2012 Olympics attempting to promote sport for all and healthy living, especially for kids. And on the other hand a purveyor of sugar-loaded fat-drenched cocoa. Thank goodness Deborah, one of the 2012 Organising Committee's top copywriters, is on the case.
Well, no. Chocolate does make you fat, but only if you eat too much of it.
Brilliant. Likewise Marmite makes you fat, but only if you eat too much of it, and a diet of deep fried Mars Bars and cheese-coated chips makes you fat, unless you eat too little of it. Sorry Deborah, but as arguments go, that one's vacuous.
So firstly, and most importantly, Cadbury and all their variety of treats are, well, just that – they're treats, marketed as treats (think Cadbury Fudge), and intended to be enjoyed as part of a healthy lifestyle.
That's not right, is it? When you see Cadbury's products advertised, the idea of "treats" and "health" is rarely at the forefront of the company's brand message. That percussive gorilla in the Phil Collins adverts may be burning up calories whilst waving his drumsticks around, and that lady in that bathtub getting oral pleasure from a thrusting Flake may be treating herself to some vigorous healthy exercise later, but the emphasis is always on chocolate rather than health. Good try Deborah, but I'm not buying this one either.
Cadbury are up-front about this on their website. Where they tell you about their products, there's a clear nutrition section which says: 'We would like you to enjoy your treats as part of a healthy and well-balanced diet. By using the links and tools below you will find information about our products that will help you to understand the part they play in your diet and therefore how you can enjoy them sensibly.'
I had a look at the flashy purple website for Cadbury's Dairy Milk. Even when I spotted the the "Nutrition" option, it was six more clicks before the "links and tools" finally revealed that 56.7% of each bar is sugar. Even sneakier, the on-screen graphic gave only the calories, sugar and fat in one chunk, leaving me to try to work out (no clues!) how many chunks the bar might contain. No Deborah, this is not up-front, this is very carefully hidden away. Do Cadbury's shout? No, Cadbury's whisper.
So not 'buy all of these delicious things we make, now, in great quantities', but 'buy sensible, eat responsibly and you'll be able to enjoy'.
How many mass market companies do you know who advertise in the hope that you won't buy many of their products? If Cadbury were truly serious about healthy eating they'd market their Creme Eggs as "Cardiac Bullets", rather than hiding a tiny purple sentence on the bottom of their packaging - "to be enjoyed as part of a healthy, active lifestyle". Cadbury may claim they want us to be "treatwise", but chocolate and health will always be uneasy bedfellows.
That very much fits in with our thinking – the idea of healthy living sitting within our wider aim of creating a sustainable Games.
And that's why London 2012 and Cadbury are supposed to be a perfect match, is it? Oh please. Attempting to prove corporate symbiosis by matching mission statements is the last resort of the failed PR copywriter. But everybody's doing it. Look, here's Todd Stitzer, Cadbury's CEO, with an absolutely desperate example of the genre.
Since John Cadbury opened a chocolate shop in Birmingham in 1824, we have strived to be a company that is both performance driven and values led – a philosophy that is at one with the long held ethos of the Games: inspiration, optimism and community.
Deborah continues by promising that Cadbury aren't out to flog chunks of brown fat to children, they're far more interested in long-term sports sponsorship and engendering a sense of community. Yeah right. And she concludes thus:
Cadbury genuinely believe in the wider, positive change the Games can bring about, and want to help that happen. They want to spread the powerful message of the Games to the hundreds of thousands of people who buy their bars.
Buy one of the newly-branded 2012 bars of Dairy Milk and all you'll notice is a purple version of that logo nobody likes. It's extremely unlikely that you'll suddenly think "ooh, once I've gobbled down this slab of artery-blocker I really must go for a healthy jog to burn off all its calories, and then pledge to make running a sustainable permanent change to my lifestyle going forward."
No, the reason for Cadbury's Olympic sponsorship is really very simple. When you and I go to the Stadium in 2012, we might want a bar of chocolate. And if the weather's anything like it is this week, we're almost certainly going to want a choc ice. All that Cadbury have done is to pay £20m for the exclusive rights to sell chocolate and ice cream at the 2012 Games, and the London Organising Committee are allowing them some elevated publicity in return. And I like my ice cream, so I'm perfectly OK about an Olympic deal that saves taxpayers some money. But please Deborah, please Todd, all you're doing is setting up an international sweetshop, so please don't try to dress up your sponsorship deal as anything more meaningful than that.
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