One client, one agency, two Valentine’s Days

Every February, Valentine’s Day splits consumers into two kinds: those planning a proposal and those planning an escape. Most brands pick a side. Mondelez picked both.

For years, Cadbury Dairy Milk Silk has stood for intimacy and emotional expression. In contrast, Cadbury 5 Star has built a counter-narrative around helping people avoid Valentine’s Day altogether. 

Same parent company. Same agency. Same cultural moment. Two opposing emotional universes.To understand how deliberate that contrast is, one has to walk through the campaigns themselves.

Silk didn’t start by shouting love. In 2015, it quietly slipped a ribbon into the front page of Hindustan Times, a ribbon that could be folded into a flower and gifted along with the chocolate.

Then came ‘Say It With Silk’, positioning the chocolate as a substitute for words left unsaid. The films focused on hesitation and first love, reinforcing gifting as emotional shorthand.

With ‘Pop Your Heart Out,’ Cadbury Dairy Milk Silk introduced a heart-shaped mould embedded within the chocolate bar, allowing consumers to physically pop out a heart piece from it. The campaign communication revolved around this act of popping the chocolate heart, turning a simple product feature into a moment of confessing their love.

The ‘How Far Will You Go for Love?’ campaign expanded the frame from admission to effort, encouraging gestures that went beyond the everyday to demonstrate affection. The question shifted from whether you would say it to how much you were willing to do to show it

Every few years, the campaign changed. The emotional premise did not.

In 2024, Silk launched #TheStoryOfUs, allowing couples to recreate their relationship milestones through an AI-generated animated film associated with director Zoya Akhtar. This blended technology with personalisation, positioning the brand as a facilitator of shared memory rather than just a gift.

The 2025 Valentine’s film featured one penguin lingering quietly around another, using that gentle pursuit as a metaphor for unspoken affection. The narrative also incorporated the act of popping out the chocolate heart, tying the product gesture to the moment one finally chooses to express what they’ve been feeling all along.

And in 2026, when AI started writing pickup lines and planning dates, Silk gently pushed back, reminding people not to outsource what the heart already knows.

Now let's flip the channel.

In contrast to Silk’s slow-build intimacy, Cadbury 5 Star has built a counter-narrative around Valentine’s Day, extending its broader “Do Nothing” positioning into the season.

Soon after launching the ‘Eat 5 Star. Do Nothing.’ campaign, the brand identified Valentine’s Day as a culturally relevant moment to champion inaction. What began as a cheeky billboard placed next to a Silk ad signalled the start of a counter-Valentine stance that would grow sharper each year.

In 2021, 5 Star introduced the ‘Escape Valentine’s Day Collection,’ redesigning conventional romantic gifts like teddy bears and photo frames into practical objects such as bean bags and chairs. The campaign reframed the day not as something to celebrate, but something to comfortably sit out.

For Valentine’s Day 2022, the brand renamed an island off the coast of Karnataka ‘My Cousin’s Wedding,’ offering singles a ready-made excuse to avoid social expectations. 

The following year, 5 Star launched the ‘Mush Detector,’ a web app designed to help users identify and avoid areas with high concentrations of overt romantic activity. The tool extended the brand’s anti-Valentine stance into digital utility, turning avoidance into a navigational feature.

The brand escalated the idea with ‘Erase Valentine’s Day,’ in 2024, collaborating with former ISRO scientist Nambi Narayanan to create a fictional time-travel vessel that crossed the International Date Line on February 14, effectively skipping the day. 

The stunt was live-streamed and later earned a Bronze at the Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity in the Entertainment Lions category.

Last year, 5 Star recruited ‘uncles’ to actively participate in Valentine’s Day trends, working on the premise that youth culture often retreats from anything co-opted by older generations. By making the day visibly uncool, the brand attempted to dilute its aspirational appeal.

This year, after years of poking fun at Valentine’s Day, Cadbury 5 Star appeared to call a truce. The brand announced it would sponsor one million dates to “restore” the occasion to its supposed original form, later releasing a reveal film in which experts were shown researching the origins of Valentine’s Day to recreate the ideal itinerary as its creator might have intended.

The twist came at the end: the campaign claimed that the woman who initiated the holiday had remained single throughout her life. 

Over time, both brands have turned Valentine’s Day into an annual property, but in entirely different ways. Silk amplifies the emotional stakes of Valentine’s Day. 5 Star lowers them. One builds intimacy; the other builds irony. And still, the coexistence doesn’t feel confused, it feels deliberate.

So how does one portfolio hold both?

The portfolio strategy

From the outside, Silk and 5 Star appear to be creative opposites. From the inside, they are strategic complements.

“This is the cornerstone of our portfolio strategy. We don’t see Valentine’s Day as an occasion with a singular emotion; we see it as a spectrum of feelings,” says Nitin Saini, VP-Marketing, Mondelez India. “The contrast isn’t conflict, it’s strategic completeness. By nurturing two sharply defined brand voices, we avoid forcing one narrative onto a culturally diverse audience. Instead, we participate in the full conversation.”

That clarity travels down to the agency level. Akshay Seth, Senior Executive Creative Director, Ogilvy, who is part of the team working on Silk, shares, “Both the teams operate in total silos. Silk is about love and expressing love. 5 Star is about doing nothing. Because both the brands have their own very well defined space, that itself becomes the creative sandbox.”

Karunasagar Sridharan, Executive Creative Director, Ogilvy, who is part of the team building 5 Star, shares insights on their approach. “Two teams work completely independently. We are very focused on our own unique brand objective and that on its own ends up creating a contrast.”

The contrast, then, is not manufactured through coordination. It is the natural result of two defined brand truths playing out in the same cultural moment.

Keeping love fresh without losing its heart

Silk’s challenge is paradoxical. Love is eternal, but Valentine’s storytelling can quickly become cliché.

Seth describes Silk’s non-negotiables. “Whatever we do, ultimately on Valentine’s Day, we are talking to hearts so it should tug at the heart. Can it leave you with some residue emotion? That is the job.”

Over the years, Silk has evolved the definition of love without diluting its core. From secret messages reflecting cultural hesitation around public romance, to #TheStoryOfUs using AI to create personalised animated love stories, the brand has mirrored how young India expresses affection.

Saini explains how this year’s AI conversation sharpened that lens. “In an era where AI is beginning to rewrite how we work, live or even how we love, does it dilute meaning or does it feel truly heartfelt? Building on ‘Say It With Silk,’ the campaign defends the value of personal, human and real effort in expressing love. It reinforces that while technology can assist, emotion cannot be automated.” 

Adding nuance to that stance, Seth says, “There is a difference between saying you are anti-AI and saying listen to your heart. We are not saying don’t use AI. We are saying that don’t forget your heart in all of this.”

Silk’s evolution has been about interpreting the cultural tension around how love is expressed today.

“We try to identify relevant tension points,” Seth says. “Last year with the penguins, it was about a generation that doesn’t easily express what’s in their heart. Through execution, it cut through and didn't become just another boy-girl love story.”

For Silk, freshness comes from reinterpreting how love feels now.

Building a franchise of rebellion

If Silk protects emotional depth, 5 Star protects irreverence.

Sridharan traces the anti-Valentine journey back to a billboard placed next to Silk. He says, “It was just a simple billboard to show the contrasting stance. That’s all it was.”

But the idea didn’t stay just a billboard for long. He explains that it escalated to renaming an island ‘My Cousin’s Wedding’, to launching the Mush Detector, to attempting to cross the International Date Line and erase February 14 altogether.

The turning point, he says, was commitment. “It was such a ridiculous idea, but we were always really committed to it. That set the tone for what we can get away with on 5 Star.”

The insight became generational. 

“If there’s a social norm that’s imposed on young people, there’s always going to be people who question why they have to do it. Valentine’s is relatively new in India. The cultural relevance is never going to die down,” Sridharan adds.

While the team had found its golden goose, the packaging had to be changed. Repetition is a trap, and freshness, that's where the real challenge lies. 

“Sequels are always worse,” Sridharan says. “So it’s not enough to do another cool idea. We move a step up instead of moving forward. Every year is a new starting point.”

So this year’s new starting point was found in ‘Restore V-Day’. The ideology behind it is to evolve from the base, not take a u-turn.

“‘Restore V-Day’ evolves the iconic ‘Do Nothing’ philosophy with a cultural twist. Instead of merely critiquing Valentine’s Day, the brand playfully “restores” it on its own irreverent terms. By sponsoring dates and unveiling the unexpected twist, 5 Star continues to champion the choice of being authentically unbothered.”

With this, the brand is playing a longer game, building cultural capital to the point where audiences anticipate the next act.

The compounding effect

Both Silk and 5 Star treat Valentine’s Day as recurring intellectual property.

Sharing the marketing philosophy that shaped both brands, Saini says, “Valentine’s Day is not a tactical sales window for us; it’s a recurring chapter in each brand’s long-term narrative. When the seasonal idea is rooted in enduring brand truth  whether it’s Silk’s belief in meaningful expression of love or 5 Star’s ‘Do Nothing’ worldview, the work strengthens memory structures over time.” 

He explains that the commercial outcomes then become a byproduct of cultural relevance and emotional salience. 

Consistency compounds and that’s where both equity and sales are built.

- Nitin Saini

Seth describes Silk’s discipline as a shared commitment between client and agency:

“The partnership has been a long one. We spend most of our time ensuring it doesn’t become another campaign that comes and goes.”

Sridharan frames 5 Star’s evolution as dialogue, not broadcast.

“It’s a two-way conversation with the audience. We have the confidence now that people will get the progression without us having to explain the stance too much.”

In both cases, as Saini says, the work strengthens memory structures. The campaigns do not reset each year, they accumulate.

Same agency, separate worlds

At first glance, housing both brands within one agency could seem risky. Two Valentine’s Day narratives, diametrically opposed, emerging from the same agency. The possibility of tonal spillover feels real.

Mondelez, however, views this not as a vulnerability, but as structural strength.

“Differentiation is protected through absolute clarity of brand territories,” Saini says. “The briefs are fundamentally different, the emotional starting points are different, and the success metrics are different. What makes the partnership strong is a shared commitment to sharpening contrast, not softening it.”

Inside the agency, that clarity translates into separation by design. Both Sridharan and Seth reiterate that there is no creative cross-pollination between the Silk and 5 Star teams during Valentine’s planning. The brands may share a corporate parent and agency network, but they do not share thinking rooms.

Over time, this disciplined separation has strengthened both franchises. As Saini reflects, “The partnership has been instrumental in building brand character over time. With Silk, Ogilvy has helped evolve the platform from simply encouraging confessions of love to now helping the young generation meaningfully express love. With 5 Star, they’ve built ‘Do Nothing’ as a pop-culture moto. Every Valentine’s Day mission on 5star is a novel attempt at rescuing the youth from pressures of 14th Feb.”

In other words, the coexistence works not because the brands are coordinated, but because they are carefully contained. The boundaries are not accidental, but strategic guardrails. And within them, each brand grows sharper.

So to return to the question that started it all: how does one portfolio hold both, and one agency nurture two distinct narratives?

By seeing Valentine’s Day as a spectrum, not a single emotion. Silk occupies intimacy; 5 Star claims irreverence. By keeping the creative processes separate, independent briefs, objectives, and teams, each brand expresses its truth fully without overlap. The agency doesn’t coordinate the contrast; it preserves it. 

The result is a portfolio that doesn’t pick a side, it owns the conversation, giving audiences the full spectrum of Valentine’s Day, year after year, while each brand sharpens its voice and builds cultural resonance.