Cadbury accused of ‘Welsh tokenism’ over free Christmas chocolate promotion
Chocolate giant Cadbury has been accused of ‘Welsh tokenism’ with a Christmas campaign that only features two locations in Wales.
The Secret Santa Campaign gives people the chance to send a bar of Cadbury chocolate for free to someone who deserves it.
In Wales the campaign is only available in Cardiff and Bangor whilst England has over a hundred locations.
Cadbury poster advertisements have been appearing across the UK and can be scanned to enable participants to send a chocolate bar anonymously to someone special free of charge.
With some of the digital posters popping up at random in the days running up to Christmas Eve, Cadbury hoped to send around 120,000 free chocolate bars to those “who need a lift” this Christmas.
The scannable QR codes can be found at bus stops, train stations and on local high streets, and 123 of the locations are in England.
Scotland has only four locations whilst Northern Ireland has 37.
Wales has two.
‘Tokenism’
Carer, Sian Evans, from Llanelli complained about the lack of Secret Santa locations in Wales and says Cadbury suggested she to go to the website and pay to send a chocolate bar instead.
Sian Evans said: “It is just pure tokenism by Cadbury to put two posters in Wales and four in Scotland whilst concentrating their marketing in England.
“Clearly we don’t deserve to reward people who do good things in Wales or maybe Cadbury don’t believe people in Wales do good deeds worth rewarding.”
A spokesperson from Cadbury said: “This year our Secret Santa service is more widely available than ever before, appearing on digital and static posters across the country for the first time to give even more people the chance to get involved and secretly send chocolate to someone special!
“For those who don’t have a Cadbury Postal Service near them this year, you can still get involved in our Secret Santa campaign via our website where you can send a loved one a Cadbury chocolate bar anonymously for £3.
“Next Christmas, we’ll be looking to build on this year’s campaign and plan to increase access to our Cadbury Postal Service even further.
“Our full Christmas range is also readily available for purchase in stores nationwide. Please note retailers are free to set their own prices.”
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This is what happens when your country is a colony and their office is based in the colonisers country. If we were independent, they would have to cater for us specifically instead of treating us as an afterthought.
I don’t think that’s what tokenism is, it’s not quite the same as being treated as inferior.
I’m sure I’ve seen other examples of this without being able to recount one just now. A company which sees the United Kingdom of England and Northern Ireland and treating Scotland and Wales as having left. Over a hundred posters in England. Ok fine but why 37 in Northern Ireland and only 6 between Scotland and Wales? It needs explaining but have I already explained it? Interesting. Cadbury should tell Sunak and Co we’ve gone.
See, this isn’t so much tokenism, as just plain disrespect towards Wales and the wonderful Welsh people. I am not Welsh, I was born on a different continent. But I live in Wales and see first hand how poorly the Welsh are treated by others – the English especially.
You see so many English people with their vaunted moral superiority, preaching tolerance. But they turn right around and insult the Welsh, tell frankly racist “jokes”.
I’m glad that person spoke up. Wales is an amazing country and even more amazing people. About time people started pushing back
Live acts do the same thing. They skip an entire country because UK is just seen as one thing and Wales as a region. Drives me up the wall.
Our message to them should be clear, we will not buy your products. We have plenty of financial clout, so lets use it to our advantage.
Please explain where our financial clout is.
Some people will see victimhood in everything, seems to be a disease on the website …..
And yet some things do actually produce victims. If some had their way there wouldn’t even be a word: Victim! Some times, Victims are Real!
And some people are so blind they refuse to see what’s happening in front of them
Who said Scrooge existed in the mind of Charles Dickens. Not sure how Wales & Scotland only warrant 2 & 4 locations where England 123 and Northern Ireland 37? And what lame excuse will Cadbury’s make I wonder? Wales & Scotland are too hilly no doubt. 🙄🍫
Easy to see how this happened.
Requests fed into a computer and the results come back showing the most densely populated towns and cities in the UK, as per the request.
Ita lazy, but the PR men look at cost per head for the campaign.
This is a regular occurrence with major companies. Look at bands whose ads boast “UK tour” then they only play London, Manchester and glasgow, and if you’re really lucky, Bristol.
There’s a company that can send your medications by mail (not great at the moment) who advertise in Wales but when I contacted them to sign up I was told the service wasn’t offered.
The answer to the English company’s that treat Wales with distain doing don’t buy any of they’re products full stop
Much prefer Lindt anyway.
Who in there right mind would bother to promote anything in Wales, you can’t get into the place without traffic jams everywhere. When you finally arrive you can’t drive around the place because of the unused cycle lanes, then you have the ridiculous price of parking, this is our capital I am talking about Cardiff