Chocography

Marabou's objective was to invite Swedes to interact and have fun with the brand while they discover new and old favourites in the full range. The brand needed to figure out how to promote an entire range of chocolate flavours when other brands were concentrating on their new chocolate flavour. Marabou also faced the challenge of getting a young and picky audience to discover new and old favourites in a category kidnapped by connoisseurs and critics.

Flowers, wine and chocolate are the most common gifts. Giving away wine is the storytellers dream with tons of expressions and tradition attached. Moreover, flowers actually have a language of their own, Floriography, connecting different flowers with different occasions and symbolic meaning. But what does your choice of chocolate really tell you? Marabou, Sweden's largest chocolate manufacturer, decided to get to the bottom of this and created the unofficial chocolate language Chocography.

Life values segmentation

In order to combine Marabou's chocolates and Swedes personal values and interests, the brand conducted a survey where different chocolate profiles were identified. 1500 Swedes, aged 16 and older, in quotas representing the Swedish population with respect to gender, age and region, were interviewed via online surveys. They were asked anything from sexual orientation to political view. Four questions were decisive in order to pinpoint the specific chocolate profile. These questions were based on demographics (age, gender) and through so called life values segmentation (Adventurous vs Traditional and Depth vs Image).

The results revealed that Fruit and Almond is the perfect gift to cultural city women and that a young woman with a shoe fetish would love a Swiss almond. Each chocolate profile was made up of three different Marabou chocolates. One profile could for example be made up of 63% Milk chocolate, 27% Fruit & Almond and 10% Daim.

The campaign was an expression of the relationship that Swedish people have with Marabou's chocolate, where the vast majority will find their favourite. The campaign needed to be engaging and authentic where Marabou was the iconic carrier of a new defined chocolate language.

Multi-step approach

The monthly campaign was executed in several steps. Before the campaign went broad, a pre-launch activity was kicked off; an earned collaboration with some of Sweden's most talented bloggers had been established giving them exclusive access to the yet unpublished campaign material. They asked their followers, and Marabou asked its Fans on Facebook: "Everyone has a chocolate profile, what's yours?" And so the campaign was set off.

The following week, strong media support was activated seamlessly integrating TVC, online ads and in-store trade decks in tonality and mannerism directing all fans to the campaign's centre arena the campaign site, which was integrated with Facebook widgets allowing easy sharing with friends. All communication directed people to the site in order stretch the interaction and spend time with the Marabou brand and naturally, the other way around, to drive people to the point-of-purchase. The main act of the campaign was hence to activate people by real time social media direction. The chocolate brand used its chocolate networks and sent personal tips to prospected fans, maintained continuous communication on the Marabou Facebook fan-page and initiated several new blog collaborations to keep the buzz buzzing.

More data from the chocolate survey was distributed to newspapers, magazines, radio- and TV stations (nationally and locally) revealing the insights and observations about people's behaviour in general and chocolate habits in specific. During the campaign, stats were monitored and proactively managed to maintain a high level of interaction and to keep the fun going.

Results

The campaign reached over 2.7 million generating 170 000 unique visits (226 000 visits in total) to the campaign site.

97 000 unique profiles took the chocolate profile test (123 000 tests in total), the profiles were viewed 390 000 times.

The chocolate duel application generated about 3 million interactions.

Average time on site was over 4.2 minutes, that's 659 days and night spent with Marabou.

The campaign generated an offline media value of US$98 000* and an online media value of US$157 000 extracted from no less than 273 campaign related blog posts and media articles.

A total of twelve blog collaborations generated 11 000 clicks or 6% of the total traffic to the campaign site; and they also submitted 1,500 reader comments about the campaign. One single post about Chocography from one of our blog collaborators had comments from more than 500 unique commentators, or sources.

Sweden's largest daily paper titled Chocography one of 2010's most powerful expressions.

Sales for chocolate bars (100g) and small chocolate bars (40-60g) rose with 51%, respectively 38% during the campaign period.

*Exchange rate at time of posting $1=R6.88