Background: Why Chocolate Is a Hard Category to Advertise
There are so many producers and makers in the chocolate market that “we taste better” or “we have new packaging” no longer catches anyone’s attention. Everyone promises a silky texture, good cocoa, and a “new improved recipe”. Attention is expensive, people are tired, and blind to advertising.
In front of the shelf the decision gets made fast: I will take the one I know. And that “know” is often a very specific brand. In Barry Callebaut’s consumer research, 68% of respondents in Belgium and 45% in France said they always buy the same chocolate brand. For a chocolate marketer that is good and bad news at once. Many people are quite loyal to their favourite brand and buy out of habit.
This has forced chocolate brands to look for new and bold ways to break through the advertising noise and create emotion. Smart media use, a social issue, or showing the brand’s own history from a new angle all get brought into play. The numbers are substantial too. In the US, confectionery advertising spend reached nearly 500 million dollars in 2023.
Three chocolate brands, KitKat, Tony’s Chocolonely, and Toblerone, have run campaigns that stood out in their field for creativity, cleverness, and measurable results. They give a good picture of how a familiar or still-unknown product can get attention without reinventing the product itself.
Campaign 1: KitKat, “Have a Break from the Ads”
There is one thing on YouTube that every user identifies with: before the video starts there is an ad, and everyone watches the seconds tick down in the corner until they can hit “skip ad”. For this campaign KitKat made 6-second ads tied to whatever people were searching for on YouTube. The ad featured a character biting into a KitKat, “promising” to start the video they wanted right away, after a short break. In the middle of the table sat a half-opened KitKat wrapper.
The message was funny: I know you want to get back to the video, so take a break.
Campaign 2: Tony’s Chocolonely, “Sweet Solution”
The Dutch chocolate brand Tony’s Chocolonely was founded with the mission of making the chocolate industry 100% slave free. To draw attention to the widespread use of unethical labour in the cocoa industry, Tony’s Chocolonely created a limited run of chocolate bars that imitated the look and packaging of iconic competing brands like KitKat, Toblerone, and Twix.
The provocative campaign, called “Sweet Solution”, pointed a finger directly at the big chocolate manufacturers to show that it is possible to produce chocolate without unethical cocoa. From a distance, Tony’s packaging looked like the well-known competitor products. A consumer used to grabbing their usual chocolate got led by the nose. The eye caught a familiar design, but on closer inspection there was Tony’s name and their message: child labour and forced labour are still used in the cocoa industry, and Tony’s wants to make “100% slave free” chocolate the norm.
Campaign 3: Toblerone, “Be More Triangle”
Toblerone, with its recognisable triangular shape and Alpine symbolism, is a brand with a long history. Over the years, though, it had started to feel slightly old-fashioned, and the first thing that came to mind with Toblerone was airport duty-free shops and last-minute discount purchases.
The “Be More Triangle” campaign set out to bring the brand closer to a younger audience and turn a physical property of the product into an emotional message. It encouraged people to be different, original, “more triangle”, and to embrace their own quirks and peculiarities in a world full of “square” norms and expectations. Stand out boldly and do not sand down the thing that makes you unique.
Strategy: Three Roads Out of the Same Problem
These three campaigns are a good example of the fact that a chocolate brand has several routes to standing out. One plays with the platform’s rules, another goes down the values and social activism road, the third makes the brand’s meaning legible again to a younger audience. In theory: platform-native media use, values-based branding, and brand repositioning.
KitKat did platform-native creative. The YouTube pre-roll is a classic annoyance, but KitKat tied it to their brand’s core story: the break. They exploited the format and YouTube’s own functionality, the skip-ad logic, and made an ad that behaved more like a short snack than a forced interruption. The channel and the format were part of the strategy and the positioning.
Tony’s Chocolonely took the values-based branding road. “Sweet Solution” was a statement campaign, and the strategic point was to generate public discussion and present Tony’s products as the ethical alternative.
Toblerone refreshed its positioning through heritage. They took their most recognisable differentiator, the triangular shape, and turned it into a metaphor. The goal was to modernise the brand image and strengthen the emotional connection, especially with a younger target group.
Results and Impact
KitKat: “Have a Break from the Ads”
- Brand favourability grew 40%.
- Purchase intent grew 19%.
- The campaign achieved a view-through rate 51% higher than the YouTube average.
- Won several Cannes Lions awards in media and creative categories.
Tony’s Chocolonely: “Sweet Solution”
- Over 250 million media impressions worldwide.
- 1.5 million euros’ worth of earned media.
- The entire limited run sold out in Tony’s own online store within a few hours.
- Helped grow Tony’s Chocolonely brand awareness in the UK market by 26%.
Toblerone: “Be More Triangle”
- Sales grew 22% in the UK over the following year.
- Campaign ROI was 1.43 pounds for every 1 pound invested.
- Spontaneous brand awareness grew 4%.
- Reached 1.4 million new households in the UK.
Criticism
Every good campaign comes with a small “but”. These three were no exception.
KitKat. A smart solution, but it lives and dies by the platform’s rules. If you are not on YouTube, or you do not have the sound on, you simply never have the experience. And second: a format trick tires quickly. The first time it is witty, by the tenth you already know what is coming and the surprise is gone.
Tony’s Chocolonely. The provocation brought attention, but lookalike packaging means legal risk, and some retail chains did not want to put them on the shelf, because nobody wants their shop associated with a trademark dispute. That added media noise to the campaign, but for that simple reason it also limited distribution. A values-based brand always carries an extra risk: if your own supply chain and actions are not permanently as clean as your message, the audience and the media are waiting round the corner for the “gotcha” moment.
Toblerone. Making a brand “younger” is always a delicate subject, because the old fan base is stuck in its habits. Go too bold and some loyal customers turn their backs. Go too cautiously and nothing changes. “Be More Triangle” had to hold the balance: a fresher message, but in a way that kept Toblerone still Toblerone.
Lessons Learned
1. Smart media use wins attention. An “ordinary” channel does not have to mean an ordinary ad. If you account for how people behave on a platform, you can put that format to work for you.
2. A social message works. Tony’s Chocolonely brought ethics onto the shop shelf. That creates a connection and gets people talking, but only when the brand’s actions match the message. When they do, you get two things at once: loyalty and organic reach.
3. Heritage is an asset, not a brake. Toblerone showed that an old brand does not have to invent new things to get younger. It is enough to take your most recognisable differentiator and give it a new meaning. That refreshes the image without losing the thing people recognise you by in the first place.
Frequently Asked Questions
Why is chocolate a difficult category to advertise?
Because purchase is habitual. In Barry Callebaut’s research, 68% of Belgian and 45% of French respondents said they always buy the same brand. Taste and packaging claims do not shift a habit, so the successful campaigns changed the context instead of the product.
What was Tony’s Chocolonely’s “Sweet Solution” campaign?
A limited run of bars packaged to imitate KitKat, Toblerone, and Twix, used to point out that those brands’ supply chains still involve child and forced labour, while Tony’s is 100% slave free.
Did the “Be More Triangle” campaign work?
Yes. UK sales grew 22% over the following year, ROI was 1.43 pounds per pound invested, spontaneous awareness grew 4%, and the campaign reached 1.4 million new UK households.
What is platform-native advertising?
Advertising built around how people actually behave on a specific platform rather than adapted from another medium. KitKat’s use of the YouTube skip-ad countdown is the clearest example here: the ad only makes sense in the place it runs.
Related Reading on Shopping Scientists
- Why Patagonia Sells Used Clothing and Offers Free Repairs – values-based branding when the actions actually match.
- How Hilton Used a 10-Minute TikTok – another brand that made the platform’s format the idea.
- Liquid Death: A Fatally Different Water Brand – standing out in a category where everything tastes the same.
