For any newcomer grocery brand, taking the step from having a strong regional presence to gaining a national retail footprint is always a complicated move.
Chocolate brand Tony’s Chocolonely hit that inflection point in the US roughly five years ago, which was when Aidaly Sosa Walker joined as VP of marketing for the US and Canada.
Before that, the brand’s presence in the US was limited to the Pacific Northwest from its base near Portland. Tony’s main roots are in Europe, however. The company was founded 20 years ago in the Netherlands.
Over the past five years, its chocolate sales in North America have grown from single-digit millions of dollars to more than $70 million per year, according to Walker.
Yet it’s only been over the past couple of years that Tony’s has ventured into paid media, she said. It previously relied on shopper marketing, live events and organic marketing, including what she referred to as “alarming” color assortments that stand out among mostly dark bars in the chocolate section.
Tony’s also draws on its mission-based origin story in its marketing. Its founder, Dutch journalist Teun van de Keuken, was inspired to launch an ethical chocolate brand after reporting a story about poor conditions in the cocoa farming industry. The company’s cocoa supply chain is transparent and defies common issues of child labor and inequity.
Chocolate bars are often impulse buys, but Tony’s can make the case that buying one of its bars is also an intentional and thoughtful purchase.
Even the name itself – “Chocolonely” – is a reference to what felt like a lonely crusade to expose the state of cocoa farmer working conditions.
Why start now?
All of which is to say that Tony’s didn’t really need to run paid media, Walker said. It did shopper marketing in stores and was a heavy spender on influencer marketing and live activations instead.
Fun fact: Tony’s isn’t the only chocolate brand that eschewed paid marketing, at least at first. Hershey’s was also famously a longtime advertising holdout. And another fun fact for you: Hershey’s was strongly associated with supporting orphanages through the philanthropy of its founder. Hershey’s now spends hundreds of millions of dollars on advertising.
But back to Tony’s. Even though the brand has adopted most digital channels, including ZIP code-targeted CTV, roughly one-quarter of its total marketing budget still goes to product sampling.
Online advertising was also less urgent for Tony’s because chocolate isn’t typically a major ecommerce purchase, Walker said. In many places and at certain times of the year, it’s practically impossible to deliver chocolate because it melts. When you consider the costs of home delivery and ice packs to prevent melting, the price to order a chocolate bar online starts to look outrageous.
“[But] now that we have solid national distribution,” Walker said, “these channels start being worth the investment for us.”
And another reason to adopt paid media, she said, is to create an association between taste and “good for you” brands as they enter national chains.
The first purchase driver for someone browsing a store shelf is almost always taste, Walker said.
A Tony’s Chocolonely bar is more expensive than almost all of the chocolate bars it’s next to on a shelf. It also has a righteous mission statement. Many customers will assume there’s a “taste sacrifice” when they buy something for reasons of health or sustainability, she said.
Working with a creative agency, Motive, and running paid media has helped Tony’s focus its marketing message to touch more on decadence and indulgence – i.e., to become more like standard chocolate marketing.
The data spine
Tony’s is also now more confident testing and adding new media channels because it has a data backbone that justifies the investments.
The brand began working with Catalina Marketing two years ago and uses its CPG household ratings to credit whether certain channels are driving new customers, Walker said. As Tony’s rolls out in more national chains, it also uses Catalina’s data to target customers in those areas.
Tony’s can rationalize additional paid media budgets when “we have good numbers to show for it,” Walker said.
For instance, Tony’s attempted some out-of-home marketing a few years ago, but without attribution and audience data to trace in-store conversions back to those campaigns, the channel didn’t stick.
It doesn’t hurt, though, that Tony’s knows how to make do with less paid media – especially as the impact of tariffs plays out and the price of cocoa rises. According to Walker, Tony’s keeps its marketing costs as a percent of sales relatively low compared to other brands.
Bigger brands with spiraling marketing costs that built their sales on being cheaper at the shelf face a tougher challenge maintaining their market share.
“We’re used to working with smaller budgets,” Walker said.
