TONY’S CHOCOLONELY

In October 2021, the brand decided to embark on its first-ever paid media campaign, drawing attention to the scale of illegal labour on cocoa farms in Ghana and the Ivory Coast. The campaign would leverage colourful, engaging creative in Manchester, Bristol and London.

Objectives:

• This was Tony’s Chocolonely’s first paid media campaign, aimed at increasing brand awareness and issue awareness of the brand and what it stood for
• We had to sensitively introduce new Chocofans to Tony’s in a tailored, targeted way to prove that paid media could benefit the brand.

Being Tony’s first campaign, tight audience targeting and making their budget work hard was critical. We mapped Tony’s core audiences to media buying audiences – Chocofans (defined as 25-44 ABC1 who buy or eat chocolate) and Tony’s Serious Fans (defined as 25-44 ABC1 chocolate eaters who buy ethically sourced food).

Understanding that Tony’s distribution focus was in London, Bristol and Manchester, and knowing that OOH over-indexed with both audiences, we chose OOH as our lead channel to land our bold message with our audience with impact, supported by social media for a reach boost.

Although aligned to a national cocoa price announcement and a PR drive from Tonys, we also validated that October was a perfect time for Above The Line media, as it was a period of quieter advertising for core chocolate brands. So, Tony’s would effectively cut through.

We had a 3-pronged approach, with each element delivering specific activity.

One-off impact drivers which make a statement:

• This consisted of enormous banners in each key city drawing attention to Tony’s key message, personalised to the city (i.e. “Bristol, we need to talk”)
• A 3-city roadshow of a sampling billboard was positioned on Saturdays in central shopping areas where people were encouraged to come up to the wall and take a free full-size bar of Tony’s. Brand ambassadors were on hand to share Tony’s mission. Once all the bars were taken – the message revealed “there’s no such thing as free chocolate”, before being restocked with a rainbow of bars. Mall D6s also signposted the events and drove wider awareness.

Formats that whisper and invite people in:

• More grounded formats such as flyposting delivered multiple messages across the creative to go deeper into the issues. This was also mirrored in Social.

Awareness driving, smart targeted formats:

• Rail 48s and Roadside 6s located in the highest indexing areas of each city made the campaign feel bigger in each area
• Digital 6s were upweighted from Thursday to Sunday where people would be in a more relaxed, treating mindset
• Tesco POS D6s directed customers at point of purchase supporting Tony’s new distribution.

The successful OOH campaign saw brand awareness and issue awareness increase considerably. Tony’s disrupted the chocolate market and has established itself as a serious contender.