Cadbury's to end sponsorship deal

From BBC News Online...

Confectionery giant Cadbury's is to end its £10m-a-year sponsorship of ITV soap Coronation Street. Cadbury's, which has sponsored the show for 10 years, said it wanted to look at new opportunities for its brand.

Cadbury's latest two-year deal with Coronation Street expires at the end of 2007. The company said it had agreed with ITV that if the broadcaster found a replacement sponsor before then, it would end its involvement earlier.

Cadbury's - whose adverts appear at the start and end of each episode of the soap - said that it had taken the decision to end the deal after refocusing its marketing strategy. "Nothing lasts for ever," a Cadbury's spokesman said. "Ten years is an awful long time for a sponsorship deal. Right now, we felt it didn't meet the needs of our marketing strategy."

The deal was seen as a landmark development in television sponsorship when it was signed in 1996. Coronation Street regularly attracts more than 10 million viewers, making it one of the most-watched programmes on television and an extremely lucrative shop window for advertisers.

I wonder if Mars or Nestle would like to take over?

How about Quality Street although some of the acting might be worth considering a sub brand called Not so quality Street

I loved the "It's all going on" Emmerdale sponsors, it was just funny watching the chinese whispers! But I can see why it was annoying.

Most of the Cadbury ones have been bad, I liked the chocolate world ones with the Corrie-esque music from years back.

They were great, haha. Chinese whispers- "Mandy's having group sex!"
and the old chocolate world adverts for Cadbury were more effective.

Oh dear, god knows what ITV will get to sponsor it now. Probably Iceland.

Hey nout wrong with that!

There's only so much Kerry Bloody McFadden sorry, Katona, I can take.

Personally i think that 10 years is too long for an advertising campaign anyway. It's now at the point where people would actually notice it more when it dissepears as they've been so used to it being there all these years.

The current sponsorship videos were rubbish, i must admit i really did like the chocolate characters on the chocolate street with the chocolate cobbles. They were the best.

Cadbury seem to think the same thing, but I don't really see the problem with it being ten years. It's just one of those things that I thought would last forever, me being so naive. It's been Corrie's only ever sponsor so it will be weird when the ads go.

However the recent ads have been awful. The chocolate street was brilliant though.

They don't keep the same ads or advertise the same products though

They've successfully launched many new products by using the corrie adverts

The chocolate street ones were the best I agree. It will be strange not having cadbury's sponsoring Corrie - I found it strage the other week when the adverts were withdrawn for a while.

10 years for a sponsorship deal isn't really that long. Powergen, for example, has sponsored ITV Weather for 17 years (although this may not last much longer, given that they've been taken over by e-on, so could be rebranded eventually)