Chocolate Ads Ranked!

On today’s episode of Tier Facqts, we’re ranking chocolate ads from 9 different chocolate brands. Which one is your favorite? We truly enjoyed ranking these chocolate ads so we’d love to know your thoughts! Here’s the full video.

 

What’s going on? My name is Gabe, and we’re about to start ranking these nine different chocolate ads. Heads up, it is much easier to critique than to create so much kudos to all the creators for being able to push the product out there. It’s real easy to do what I’m doing and that’s just critiquing.

We’re also critiquing under an acquisition lens, not branding, which means that’s the likelihood that the audience not only clicks on the ad but follows through and purchases the product.

Chocolate Ads: Tier List

Now, we’re going to be ranking them in four different tiers. The top tier is Legendairy. Next is Milk Up Your Mind. Third is They’re Asking For Truffle and last is they just Bit Off More Than They Could Chew. Let’s get into the first video, which is Hershey’s. 

Hershey’s

I really love this opening. You get product placements. You’re able to see the chocolate where it says “Share a bar.” It also gives more context because they have the headline as well.

It’s a sound-off world. By the way, all these videos that I’m watching is without the sound because that’s how 85% of the audience within the social feed on Facebook and Instagram want to consume the content. So you want to make sure that your videos are applicable for the vast majority, that you’re swimming with the stream and not going against it.

In fact, if you are very sound prominent on Facebook and Instagram, your ads are not going to be as strong because the audience isn’t able to visually follow along. That is different on TikTok though but here, we’re specifically talking about Facebook and Instagram.

So it says “Share a bar with the ones you keep close” and you get product placement right there. You see them enjoying the chocolate. They’re smiling and this video is all under six seconds. It’s going to be a prominent video for the vast majority of the audience’s mindsets which 70% of the time, is an on-the-go one. Thus, any time you can have it under 15 seconds, that’s optimal. 

If you can tell a story within six seconds about why your product is unique and why they should actually click on the ad, even better to you. You’re going to be able to access a larger portion of the audience’s mindset who’s geared towards short content, rather than having like a minute or two minute video. Ain’t nobody got time for that. So Hershey’s, I’m going to go Legendairy.

Kit Kat

Let’s go into Kit Kat. “Break me off a piece of that Kit Kat bar”. Cool, it’s nice, it’s okay. It’s showing the product but it’s not saying anything that’s special about it.

The branding is “Break me off a piece of that Kit Kat bar.” Everybody’s able to complete that if you’re familiar with Kit Kat since childhood or basically if you’ve been familiar with Kit Kat at all. But it’s not telling me anything that’s special about the product.

I’m going to put it at the low end. They are Asking For Truffle on this. It’s not going to be at top performer. It’s not the worst in the world. Actually. You know what? I’m going to put my hater on because “Break me off a piece of that?” They don’t even complete that.

It’s nice, it’s cute how they have the product there but that is more of a branding. That is not acquisition and it doesn’t tell me anything that’s special about the product. It looks good but we’re going to go slightly Bit Off More Than They Could Chew. It’s okay, not great, but I’ve got my critique hater hat on.

M&M’s

M&Ms, let’s get into it. So we’re inside a bag of M&M’s mix. By the way, I’m not seeing the product, I’m only seeing the packaging. They do say in very small text: “Milk Chocolate,” “Peanut Butter” and “Peanuts,” but that’s not the first thing that’s going to be in the audience’s attention.

It goes so quick, I bet you the vast majority of the people aren’t even going to be aware of that language. I don’t really know what context that is, I guess they’re break dancing. That doesn’t give me anything on what the actual product is.

It doesn’t get my taste buds going. While it may be clever and it may be fun for branding, (those M&M guys are for sure branding), it doesn’t tell me anything about the product. It’s just your branding which is not bad. M&M has the budget to do branding. However, we’re looking for acquisition here.

Nutella

Let’s get into Nutella. I like this one, you see the Nutella used. Right away, you see a Nutella pancake. You see the product being used and you understand how it can be used.

You also see how Nutella can be a part of happiness or give happiness by the second scene where it’s showing the smile on the pancake. What that gives the audience is they see the product, they see happiness, and they see everybody else happy. Nutella is going to make you happy. That is Legendairy. It is a quick video. How long is this? Six seconds? That is a good video.

Oreo

All right. I have a feeling that I’m either going to rank them Legendairy or they Bit Off More Than They Could Chew, but let’s hope that we can be able to get some more in the middle.

However, I do like Oreos as well. Getting into double stuff. Boom! It’s a strong visual and they say “double stuff.” Guess what the visual does? It shows double stuff, it shows that it is thick. That is good. The audience understands what the benefit is.

They get a double Oreo or they get a thick Oreo. That visual takes what? Two seconds. “Mega stuff,” it’s mega thick. Then you see all the flavors that you can be able to have with it. There’s Peanut Butter Mint and there may be another one there as well but it does a good job.

Once again, six seconds, you are able to get the benefit of the mega stuff which is the ultimate benefit. Within the mega stuff, you get to see the variety of different flavors that they have. Great six second video.

I’m telling you, hopefully objectively we can get some more in the middle. But those three are all my favorite. We’ll talk about what the king of the mountain is at the end but all three so far are really good.

Reese’s

Reese’s. That’s so boring, it’s a product shot. It’s not even a video. It’s just a still image that they move in there sliding into your feed. That’s nice. I have a bunch of things sliding into my feed.

It’s cool that you call it out, it’s a little clever I guess, but it doesn’t tell me anything about it. They’re just paying to put their product in front of me. They’re not paying to tell me a story. They Bit Off More Than They Could Chew and if you see there, there’s the bite mark. They should have focused on telling that story instead of the bite mark.

Rolo

All right, let’s go into Rolo. I’m going to be such a hater. One sec, I want to look at Kit Kat. Let’s keep it real, as real as we can, because looking at Rolo. . . You know what Rolo actually tells us more of a story.

So you’re able to see the packaging, you’re able to see the chocolate and you’re able to see what’s in the middle of the chocolate. “Savor the moment” is strong.

I was initially thinking they Bit Off More Than They Could Chew, but they do a storytelling that tells more about Rolo — the story of you eating the chocolate. It would’ve been great if instead of using still images, they used video to be able to bring it to life. That would definitely help milk up my mind to up the tier. That’s probably a bad joke. But it’s good or it’s okay. It’s okay.

Snickers

Let’s go to Snickers. This is total branding. We don’t see the chocolates until the end where it says “satisfies.” Where, true it is only six seconds, but you’re still going to have a high volume of people who are going to drop off after three, four, or five seconds.

So they’re not even going to be able to stay around to see the visualization of the chocolates or of the Snickers bar. Because of that, they’re not optimizing what their benefit is for the audience within social media consumption.

When they’re looking into that truck, there’s not even a Snickers bar in there. It doesn’t tell me anything. High production on brand, awesome. We can negotiate that. Really good. But on acquisition, it doesn’t tell me anything.

Theo Chocolate

All right. Let’s go to Theo chocolate now. Oddly enough, I think this is the only 15-second video. Typically, when researching ads or just in general, you’re going to have a little difficulty finding videos that are under 15 seconds.

By the way, everybody’s doing that as a good practice and if we had a wider array of all chocolate ads, Kit Kat would be higher, but we’re doing a tier out of these nine individual ads. We’re not ranking a hundred ads. That is a future video if we get enough buzz and people actually want to watch and that’s probably going to take like an hour, maybe even longer.

Let’s get back to Theo. They say “chocolate,” they show their packaging and they have their Theo chocolates bite sized around the product. I would’ve liked for them to actually lead with the scene that they have in the third or fourth second because it’s more of the products and benefits rather than just the packaging.

Everybody has packaging. You can have the most amazing packaging in the world, but it’s really hard for that packaging to be able to differentiate what the benefit is or what’s so special about your product. It’s better to actually show the product itself.

They do a good job to show that it’s mini or bite sized snacks. “Chocolate, grab yours today.” You have a pretty good understanding of what it is. I would put this as Milk Up Your Mind.

It doesn’t tell me really what’s so exceptional, it just says that they’re bite sized chocolates. It gets that message across, but it doesn’t really differentiate itself besides that it is bite sized chocolate. It’s good. It’s going to get the job done. It is definitively, within my prism of view, going to outperform acquisition than anything that is below it but it is definitely not Legendairy.  

Final Thoughts

If I had to go for which one is the best, Hershey’s is a little bit more branding. I like that. I like the ad, but it is more geared towards branding and it does not highlight the product. It’s still Legendairy for a six second video. I really, really like it.

However, the Oreo does a great job. That is the top of the tier where you see the benefits, you know mega stuff. It’s a great visual for what mega stuff is. You see all different flavors that are involved and that is a concise message within six seconds. Oreo is the king of the mountain and is definitely going to get dunked into some Legendairy milk.

Anyways, let me know what you think in the comments below. Right now we’re going to be showing you all these chocolate ads as well. Let us know what we got right, what we got wrong. Can’t wait to see you on the next one!

If you enjoyed us ranking chocolate ads from your fave brands, make sure to subscribe to our YouTube Channel! And, click here for our latest blogs on Paid Social.

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