Cadbury’s 2007 “Gorilla” campaign featured a gorilla playing drums to Phil Collins’s “In the Air Tonight.”
The commercial showed the costumed gorilla waiting behind a drum kit before launching into the song’s famous drum break. It ended with Cadbury’s “A Glass and a Half Full of Joy” branding. The advertisement was created by the agency Fallon London and directed by Juan Cabral.
Its unusual structure avoided showing chocolate being eaten or explaining a product feature. Instead, surprise, music and absurd humor generated attention and encouraged viewers to share and discuss the commercial. The campaign is frequently cited as an early example of a television advertisement benefiting from online video and word-of-mouth circulation.
The song is sometimes incorrectly identified as another Phil Collins track, while the campaign is sometimes described only as the “drumming gorilla ad.” Its formal title is “Gorilla.”