Toblerone x Biscoff: A Great Product, A Great Launch

When you have a great innovation, how do you launch it most effectively? One of the ways Test Your Innovation is so useful for brands is that it goes beyond just identifying the best new ideas and product options. It also includes diagnostics that can help you craft your launch marketing so it has the highest possible impact.

So this week we’re looking at a 5-Star innovation from Toblerone and Lotus Biscoff which also launched with a 5-Star ad, and exploring how some of the diagnostics in the innovation report are visible in the ad too.

Lotus Biscoff are a brand with an established strategy of brand extensions and collaborations – it’s how they’ve grown from a local biscuit brand to an internationally recognised name with a signature flavour. For this innovation they’re partnering with Toblerone, and it’s an excellent fit: two brands with a premium reputation and strong local European heritage. The partnership is not on a new Toblerone bar but instead on ‘Diamond Truffles’ – Toblerone chocolate with a Biscoff flavoured filling in a diamond shape evoking the signature Toblerone triangle.

It’s positioned as a high-class product suitable as an indulgence or a gift, and the Test Your Innovation report shows the Diamond Truffles are extremely popular with the public. They score an exceptional 5.7-Star Rating, close to the maximum possible. They also perform exceptionally on the Emotional Response measure. And they get strong results on the two other parts of the Test Your Innovation package – the share trading game (71% say they would buy shares) and the time spent reaching that decision, which tells us how easy the idea is to ‘get’.

So the headline scores show that this is a really excellent, strong launch in good time for the holiday season. But Test Your Innovation goes deeper, with diagnostics exploring the key attributes people associate with the idea, and the predicted demographics the truffles would appeal to.

What those diagnostics tell us is that the truffles are seen as a sophisticated and smart choice – scoring well above the norm on “High Quality” and “Recommended” but also “Good Value”, a premium-level candy that won’t bust your budget. People also see the Diamond Truffles as having strong adult appeal – they aren’t a chocolate for kids.

Bear those findings in mind when we look at the Test Your Ad results, where Diamond Truffles gets a 5.6-Star Rating, putting it in the top 10% of the highly competitive Candy & Gum category. The ad shows a glamorous woman at an exclusive party in a top hotel, wearing a Diamond Truffle as a pendant around her neck. The lights flicker, and then we see a man has taken the truffle from around her neck and is eating it: an entertaining twist on the idea of a high class jewel thief.

So we know from Test Your Innovation that people would see the ad as having strong orientation with the product – the ad is giving “high-class” and “adult” in exactly the way the TYI voters predicted would appeal. Even the best product needs the right marketing, but understanding public perceptions can help craft that marketing and give your 5-Star Innovation the launch it deserves.