Thinkbox
Since 2005, Tony's Chocolonely has been on a mission to fight exploitation in the cocoa industry. The ethical chocolate company sources its cocoa from Ghana and Côte d'Ivoire, where issues including child exploitation, poverty and deforestation are particularly pronounced.
As such, it was the perfect candidate for the Champions category, designed to help established brands spark national conversations around sustainability, in Sky Media's Sky Zero Footprint Fund, which aims to supercharge the reach of sustainable brands by offering TV advertising support.
Tony's Chocolonely's agency, House of Oddities, came up with an idea based around a simple strategic thought - fighting exploitation and deforestation in cocoa shouldn't feel distant, daunting, or like someone else's problem. The brand subsequently triumphed in the contest, winning £500,000 of airtime across Sky Media channels.
This victory marked the brand's first entry into TV advertising. Sachini Imbuldeniya, chief executive oddity at House of Oddities, talks through the creative process that secured the win, how the agency then worked with System1 to refine the creative, how the campaign performed, and what's next for Tony's Chocolonely.
Rather than choose an overtly “sustainable” idea, the strategic idea for the campaign was based around the concept that people were more likely to engage with something entertaining - something they'd actually want to watch. The agency came up with the line `There's Fight in Every Bite' to show that making a difference could fit into everyday life, and that this could begin with a simple swap in the supermarket chocolate aisle.
“That reframing gave us the creative freedom to turn a serious, complex issue into something bold, accessible and genuinely entertaining,” says Imbuldeniya. “With '90s nostalgia having a moment and professional wrestling enjoying a huge resurgence, we found our perfect metaphor: Tony's versus exploitation, battling it out in the ring.” The creative saw two wrestlers used as a simple metaphor - the good guy, Tony's Chocolonely, versus the bad guy, X-Ploitation, engaged in a rumble. “It gave a complicated global issue an instantly understandable visual language and allowed a hard-hitting message to reach a broad audience in a way that was fun, unexpected and difficult to ignore,” she explains.
While the airtime budget from the prize was very welcome, the agency worked hard to make the production budget stretch too and chose its campaign partners carefully. “Taking a brand onto TV for the first time is exciting. Doing it on a challenger-brand budget is also a pretty good exercise in creative problem-solving,” says Imbuldeniya. “We knew from the outset that we couldn't compete by throwing money at the screen, so our approach was to surround the idea with people who believed in it enough to make every pound work harder. That started with our brilliant production partners Common People Studios and our director Mary Sue Mason. They completely bought into the ambition of `There's Fight in Every Bite', pushed the creative with us and pulled in an incredible team who were prepared to go above and beyond to bring it to life.”
This included the casting process, where House of Oddities put a particular focus on authenticity and picked real wrestlers rather than just actors. “Finding our Tony was obviously a fairly important piece of casting, but as soon as we discovered Tommy Tanner, we knew we had our hero. Then we found Ben Pumffrey, who was the perfect larger-than-life counterpoint as our villain, X-Ploitation. Suddenly, the metaphor we'd written on paper was standing in a wrestling ring in front of us,” she adds.
To extend the ad beyond the screen, House of Oddities staged a live wrestling match in the middle of King's Cross station, took the fight into print advertising, and built a social campaign that extended the characters and humour of the TV spot.
As with all campaigns it works on, House of Oddities not only offsets the carbon of everything it makes but is also careful to consider the environmental impact of a production from the very beginning - from the partners it chooses and the locations it shoots in, to how the crew travels, what they eat and what happens to waste. “None of these decisions are huge in isolation,” she says. “But taken together, they make a meaningful difference - and for us, more responsible production isn't an add-on. It's simply part of making good work.”
In order to make the work better still, Tony's Chocolonely also worked with creative effectiveness platform System1, testing the work from the initial storyboard through to the final edit. Imbuldeniya says that the feedback gained from this helped make the ad resonate beyond people who were already aware of - and fans of - the brand, so that it could grow its market share. The research also helped identify where to make the complex message simpler through the storytelling. “One of the biggest learnings was actually to do less. We reduced the number of fast-cut scenes in the final edit, giving the idea, characters and message more room to breathe - and ultimately making the 30 seconds more impactful,” she explains.
The results backed up the methodology, with Tony's debut TV ad outperforming the UK norm for new advertisers. Sky's post-campaign analysis showed positive shifts in both brand associations and consideration, alongside encouraging early commercial signals, including increased household penetration and rate of sale. Among chocolate buyers, the campaign also strengthened some of the perceptions that matter most - with `great tasting' up 4.7 points and `chunky' up 4.4 points - while driving significant increases in active behaviours such as seeking out more information and visiting the Tony's website. More importantly, it translated into an increase in sales, with the milk chocolate bar featured in the ad seeing a 20% year-on-year sales uplift.
As for what's next, the TV ad is back on screens this autumn, and the agency is already looking at how it can keep building on that momentum and take the platform even further. “After all, Tony is always ready for a rematch,” concludes Imbuldeniya.