Get to know Tony & # 39; s Chocolonely
Where our food comes from and how it is made has not always been a priority. In the chocolate and cocoa industry in particular, reluctance to grapple with the ethics of cocoa cultivation means that 1.56 million children continue to work illegally in the international cocoa industry. In the mid-2000s, Tony & # 39; s Chocolonely, based in Amsterdam, was founded to fight this injustice. It became one of the few chocolate brands with a mission to be 100% slave free.
While many traditional brands come from a long line of pastry chefs, Tony's Chocolonely's unlikely creators were a group of journalists in Amsterdam led by Teun van der Keuken (Tony's namesake). In 2003, the team was researching food production and supply chains for a TV show when it discovered the alarming reality of what was happening on cocoa farms in West Africa, where the majority of our cocoa (around 60%) comes from. The team wanted to speak to chocolate companies to see what could be changed, but got no response.
A stack of Tony & # 39; s Chocolonely Bars
So van de Keuken went a step further, turned to the police and asked for arrest. He then asked a judge to convict him of driving slavery for eating a chocolate bar. Although the act made a great testimony, much to van de Keuken's disappointment, the judge refused to convict him.
They changed the pace and van de Keuken and the other journalists decided to change the industry from the inside out and create their own bar of chocolate. They called it Tony & # 39; s Chocolonely because it was van der Keuken's "lonely battle against inequality in the chocolate industry". That was in 2005 and since then Tony & # 39; s Chocolonely has grown to be the most popular chocolate brand in the Netherlands with a 20% market share and has made big waves since arriving in the UK in 2019.
Although van de Keuken has since stepped down from the brand, it still embodies the same values and mission as it did at the beginning. To find out how the brand continues to stand out from the competition, let's talk to Tony's CMO Thecla Schaeffer and Niels Heimans (founding partners of Herc, the agency that recently launched the brand's first international campaign) for the inspiration behind Finding out the brand's visual branding, the challenges of marketing chocolate, and why the brand is always guided by its mission.