Christmas: A World of Never Square
Toblerone had a problem:
Christmas is the pinnacle moment in the annual chocolate calendar. For Toblerone, maximising brand engagement and product sales at Christmas is crucial to the overall strategy of the business. Toblerone had a brand-new trump card for marketing Christmas 2023: a new personalised advent calendar. In addition to this, Toblerone’s personalised Christmas sleeves had been a primary seller for years.
This meant Toblerone was facing a creative and marketing challenge: how to give the advent calendar a strong new product launch whilst also bringing the warmth, reliability and heritage of Toblerone and its well-established, well-loved personalised sleeves and other flavours and formats at Christmas.
We had an idea:
We knew we needed to embrace the fact we had many different products to showcase with equal prominence. Creatively, we needed to lean into the cultural context and the Christmas occasion, as well as the brand identity. With the ‘Never Square’ brand positioning, plus the magical nature of Christmas, plus the challenge of multiple products, new and old, to hero with equal prominence, we had the ingredients for an exciting creative idea: the Chocolate Factory.
The chocolate factory design leant into the triangular brand iconography to highlight the magic, surprise and delight of the Christmas occasion, that Christmas, like Toblerone, and even its Christmas factory, is ‘Never Square’. As well as being an opportunity to create a brand world, the chocolate factory idea was the perfect flexible creative platform allowing us to invite consumers into our creation process and spotlight the magic of that process and the quality of each different product. The abstract factory visuals created a behind-the-scenes feel, showcasing products moving on a conveyor belt, coming out in a front room environment crafted to feel cosy and festive. A new range of assets was created to launch the advent calendar while keeping it aligned with the main Christmas creative.
The results:
Our work was a hit, helping Toblerone to truly own Christmas. All Christmas sales targets were hit and the advent calendar sold out within 5 days.
Further seasonal campaign moments
