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Hello Marketing Chroniclers. I’m hitting you with another brand breakdown today — this time in the chocolate category.

Tony’s Chocolonely is a fascinating case study of how purpose-led brand can still unashamedly seek commercial growth without losing its mission.

One more thing: today I am launching a podcast in partnership with APG Canada called Grow Your Brain. Share and subscribe wherever you get your podcasts!

Drop me a line on LinkedIn if anything stands out to you!

Enjoy 🧠

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In 2025, when the US placed crippling tariffs on the Canadian economy, we saw an entire country rally behind “Buy Canadian.” It was a sight to be seen – patriotism at an all-time high, people starting “Buy Canadian” websites that categorized which brands were Canadian vs Made in Canada vs Product of Canada, and so on.

In the early days Canadian products were flying off the shelves. It was quite common to enter a grocery store and see entire aisles peppered with holes wherever maple leaf tags were displayed next to the price.

But over the course of a few months, consumers started to resort back to their old buying habits. Buying Canadian was nice, but a bit too expensive. As a matter of fact, Loblaw observed that as the initial emotion settled, the question became less “what should I support?” and more “what can I justify paying for every week?”. For shoppers, patriotism still had to survive the grocery bill.

There’s a saying in military strategy that goes “after two weeks every war becomes a battle of logistics.” Meaning, at some point emotion wears off, and the math needs to start mathing.

Chocolate is an impulse category. One in which people will typically pick up a bar at the checkout as opposed to having it written down on the shopping list. The battlefield is incredibly narrow – like a Vogelkop, chocolate brands must entice consumers through its visual appeal and bring to mind fuzzy feelings of comfort and taste.

It’s not the ideal moment to be lecturing shoppers about the cocoa slave trade – despite its many concerning facts that should be widely talked about.

And yet, Tony’s Chocolonely has built a brand around this very improbability.

When Teun van de Keuken (aka, Tony) reported himself to the Dutch police as an accomplice to slavery for knowingly eating chocolate produced through slave labour, he wasn’t actually trying to get himself into prison. Instead, he was doing what challenger brands do: picking a fight with something they stand against in the category.

So, when the courts threw out his case, he decided to attack the problem via a more commercial angle: founding Tony’s Chocolonely to fight exploitation in cocoa (Tony, an English-friendly version of Teun, and Chocolonely, to highlight the lonely battle to change the industry).

But Tony’s problem was never about whether consumers care about ethical cocoa. Many do. The harder question has always been whether they care at the exact moment a chocolate decision gets made.

So, given their challenger reality of small budgets, they went on to take advantage of every bit of possible owned media they had to convey their message: the big bold red packaging, the unequally divided chocolate bar, Tony’s Open Chain (which is a shared infrastructure that other companies can plug into to source fairtrade cocoa), provocative campaigns, and so on.

Despite the noble cause and clever moves to gain attention, Tony’s business in the US still has a long way to go. 

According to Tracksuit data, only 13% of Americans are aware the brand even exists (compared to a competitor average of 64%). And of those who are aware of the brand, only 62% would consider buying it (for those wondering, that’s not great in an impulse category where the average sits at around 70%).

Encouragingly, Tony’s is not only associated with ethics. Among people who know the brand, “taste” cues are coming through too: good, delicious, tasty. In chocolate, that matters because virtue may earn attention, but flavour earns the repeat purchase.

But the more interesting combination sits alongside those table-stakes associations: ethical, fun, and expensive. That trio captures both Tony’s opportunity and its challenge.

So, what do we make of this?

It’s very difficult to reconcile economic growth and sustainability – whether in the environmental sense or ethical one. 

Patagonia’s moral authority often comes from restraint: buy less, repair more, consume carefully. Tony’s moral authority works differently. It needs growth, because scale is the mechanism of impact.

If Tony’s revenue growth outpaces the category’s, it means that more ethically sourced cocoa is being sold (and less slave labour chocolate is being produced). This is the exact type of system change that they’re after.

But the crucial detail is which message Tony’s will choose to lead with:

Tony’s does not need Americans to shop like activists. It needs them to feel like choosing Tony’s is the most enjoyable version of doing the right thing.

Today I am launching a new podcast in partnership with APG Canada called Grow Your Brain.

This is a podcast made by strategists, for strategists, featuring long-form conversations with people shaping our industry’s thinking and ideas worth wrestling with.

In this inaugural episode I am talking to Paul “PK” Lawton.

PK is a sociologist, co-founder of Sister Merci, and an instructor at McMaster University. His work examines how culture shapes behaviour, belief, and decision-making.

This conversation explores the intersection of sociology and marketing strategy, emphasizing the importance of understanding social actors, assemblages, and the limitations of traditional frameworks. PK Lawton shares insights on how brands are built in regulated industries, the influence of social sciences, and the need to adapt in an age of AI and rapid change.

Subscribe so you don’t miss future episodes!

PPA

Pedro Porto Alegre is a seasoned marketing strategist with in-depth experience building brand and communications strategies for top-tier B2C and B2B organizations across North America. His repertoire extends from crafting and executing integrated multi-media brand marketing campaigns to the commercialization of performance-driven innovations for multimillion-dollar and nascent brands alike.