The Challenge

Monty Bojangles needed help to find their brand voice and identity, whilst increasing product trial. Getting brand awareness was key and in the world of FMCG, it isn't an easy task.

The Insight

When it comes to targeting, who doesn’t love chocolate truffles? But therein lies the problem. The supermarket shelves are packed full of chocolatey goodness and people are loyal to their go-to, so how do you break through the noise and huge competitor budgets?

Well, you let your chocolate do the talking. Seems obvious right? But to do the talking, Monty Bojangles needed help to find their brand voice and identity, and one that felt different to the norm. With this, we identified an opportunity to flip the cultural narrative. While influencers rode the clean eating tsunami sized wave and rivals preached for cheesy staged shared occasions, we ignored the hype. Our research recognised target buyers were crying out for a little selfish indulgence to boost stressful days, leading us to our own people-powered, tastier wave – un-shareable chocolate.

The Solution

Following consumer and competitor research, social listening, media analysis and market reporting, our strategic overhaul for the brand culminated in a brand strategy and comms plan. The solution was to build a flavour-focused brand character (Monty) with a self-deprecating tone of voice, to ground the magical brand world in everyday life - whilst developing a distinctive look and feel to match.

We ran hyper-targeted creative across highly indexing regions with outdoor, shopper creative, proximity mobile ads, geo-targeted social and radio. This coincided with a 4-day experiential activation with agile sampling teams in key locations - enchanting the senses with taste-bud-tantalising pop-ups to immerse consumers into the brand's magical world.

Smart Targeting

If our audience needed a boost in their day-to-day lives, we needed to boost awareness where it mattered - in the real world! We took our brand to the people, focusing on product trial and experiential in key geographic areas. This meant hyper-targeted creative across highly indexing regions. We hijacked key competitor Acorn groups leaving us with a broad 24-44 year old female audience. This was overlaid with TGI lifestyle statements for those wanting to treat themselves, looking for unique gifts and those open to new.

Lead Strategic & Creative Agency (all in house)

Brand Strategy

Brand Workshops

Brand Positioning

Outdoor Campaign

Experiential

Radio

Videography

Creative Ideation

Brand ToV

Media Planning

Trade Shows

Sampling

Shopper Marketing

Creating an Inspiring Brand World

This is a magical place where the eccentric Monty preaches his complex and top-secret chocolate making prowess - the reality is everyone just wants to eat them for themselves. This gave us the license to build a flavour focused narrative (transporting people to a mystical chocolate world) while staying grounded in the everyday (you can pick up a pack in your local supermarket).

Delivering in a Challenging Market

According to Nielsen data in 2023 our budget was less than 10% of Lindt, the market leader. Add to that the need to be different, it meant we had to create a truly bespoke experience and think differently with the media or be completely swamped.

Our decision to be focused on the real world helped to engage those in our target area, but we had to rely on organic social and UGC to amplify the campaign through multiple opportunities to share content.

We invested in long-term brand building, rather than short-term sales (discounts & promotions) whilst also investing in our relationship by limiting our agency fees to help the potential for future bigger campaigns.