Aim:
Newcomer brand Beyond Dark wanted a bigger bite of the UK’s dark chocolate market. So they set out to make their little drops famous for ‘pleasure’. How could they do this in a credible and newsworthy way?
Creative:
Beyond Dark has created the first ever pleasure scale. This allows them to measure their chocolate versus other lovely moments in life – and of course rival brands. They did it by holding a study with neuroscientists. 100 participants were fitted up with the latest ‘EEG’ brainwave-reading headsets, set up to analyse pleasure for the first time. They then took a series of pleasurable tests. The documentary and news were released on ‘Blue Monday’, the nation’s most depressing day. The findings then became the advertising, from outdoor to the pack itself. For once, a brand’s emotional claims had been proven.
Results:
An immediate sales uplift of 50%. All the coverage, 7000 new Twitter followers, and over 2000 inbound links propelled Beyond Dark from page 22 to the top of UK search rankings for ‘dark chocolate’. This persuaded several retailers to stock Beyond Dark while Sainsbury’s, one of the UK’s biggest supermarkets, doubled distribution. After two months, sales were up 327% – an uplift that continues to climb.