Trapa Chocolates was an old-fashioned local Spanish brand, so stuck in the past that their buyers were getting older (50 to +65 women)

Trapa had a good and tasty product, but a really bad perception as a brand. Sales were decreasing very fast, competing without success against multinational giants such as Nestlé or Ferrero. Every year, Trapa was being taken out of more and more supermarkets.

The brand was so damaged that Trapa was acquired by a new owner

So the challenges were:

to relaunch the brand (new brand purpose)

to reach younger audiences: a new conscious consumer.

to stop being taken out of more supermarkets, in a category led by multinational companies (Ferrero, Nestlé,…)

According to the “Perceptions in the sugar, sweets, and vegetable oils”, (*The cocktail analysis) 92% of the Spanish are worried about the palm oil presence in food: they consider it harmful to health. And chocolates are the category with the highest concentration of palm oil in the entire food industry, with 21.48% of its composition.

Removing palm oil would be listening to consumers. However, for a chocolates brand, talking about health would imply reducing the perception of taste and pleasure, two of the main drivers, according to our research.

But the Spanish don’t know this ingredient is causing deforestation of the second lung of the planet, Borneo, putting the orangutan in danger of extinction.

This allowed us to settle a game-changing purpose in the category, no multinational could stand for because it implied a deep transformation:

To relaunch the brand it was decided:

to renew the whole production chain in order to be more sustainable,

to remove palm oil from all products,

to explain it from an environmental perspective,

to challenge the category leaders in the Spanish market (mainly Ferrero and Nestlé)

to do it taking risks, with bravery: with an activist attitude

So how did a Spanish Chocolates ad save a piece of a Borneo rainforest?

An apparently normal press print was in fact a public challenge to the main chocolate brands (Ferrero, Nestlé,…) and the palm lobby.

What looked like an innocent press print was in fact a document that marked the geolocation of a rainforest that was about to be deforested in a matter of weeks in Borneo. With this simple page we were warning we would denounce its deforestation, coming back to take a new photo in the same spot, as soon as it were destroyed.

We knew it was an innovative and simple way to make chocolate multinationals nervous, uncover the hidden interests behind palm oil, and to create a national debate about deforestation. What we didn’t know is how their ridiculous way to react would save this piece of land. (WATCH CASEFILM)

RESULTS

The palm oil lobby, led by chocolate makers, sued us asking for the withdrawal of the campaign. We didn’t do it, and leaked it, sparking a huge debate about the ingredient.

But, when we wanted to return to Borneo (2019), the Government of Indonesia denied our visa. We had no choice but to hire a satellite that revealed a ridiculous truth: they had deforested all the piece of land where we had taken the photograph, to avoid at all costs that the second photo with a deforested background was produced. We publish the satellite image generating again a huge echo.

+ 73% "palm oil" searches

+ 47% "Trapa" searches

+ New distribution in supermarkets (Carrefour, Auchan, and many more).

+ 51% sales

Proving that a good purpose can make both, the business and the Earth, win.