Client: Tony’s Chocolonely
Year: 2024
Agency: Chuck Studios
Project: Strategy & Photography Production
My Role:
Research, ideation, testing, strategy, visual development, art direction
At Chuck Studios, we partnered with Tony's Chocolonely to develop a bold culinary identity that emphasized their unique chunky chocolate bars while enhancing taste appeal through strategic visuals.
This work reflected a broader strategic shift happening at Tony's around the same time. As reported by The Drum in January 2025, Tony's Chief Brand Officer Sadira Furlow spoke publicly about the brand having been mission-first for years without a defined culinary identity, meaning the words and associations it wanted consumers to build with its chocolate simply hadn't been established. Furlow described the challenge in an indulgent category like chocolate: purpose alone isn't enough, since the product itself has to be part of the story too.
By combining mouthwatering photography with a carefully crafted narrative, the project aimed to shift consumer perceptions and make Tony's synonymous with indulgence and quality, directly addressing this gap, while driving engagement across digital, print, and retail platforms.
Execution & Collaboration
Team: Collaborated with Chuck Studios' global creative director, art director, and a freelance creative.
Process:
Conducted consumer research and market analysis.
Created moodboards, sketches, and storytelling concepts during ideation.
Produced and styled photography for three chocolate flavors, with slight digital enhancements.
Challenges:
Navigated Tony's strict brand guidelines, avoiding traditional chocolate visuals like melted chocolate.
Addressed client feedback by backing decisions with neuroscience insights and human-centered perspectives.
Key Deliverables:
Introduced the "flying corner piece" as a distinctive brand asset.
Delivered a comprehensive playbook to guide the future use of the culinary identity.
outcome
The project resulted in a comprehensive playbook outlining photography "codes" to guide future visuals and build on Tony's distinctiveness. A new distinctive brand asset, a flying corner piece of chocolate, was introduced to emphasize the bold, chunky nature of the bars, and used across photography for multiple flavors.
Read more on Tony's brand strategy shift: The Drum, January 2025
With Tony's now publicly prioritizing creative distinctiveness over media spend to compete against much larger players in the category, brand assets like this one carry outsized commercial weight, a dynamic this project anticipated ahead of its public discussion.
