Building a billion dollar business 

Mars Inc. wanted to build its indulgence chocolate business to one billion dollars in five years. Left Blue Sky was tapped to design platforms that would identify meaningful benefit areas, enhance consumers’ chocolate experiences, and result in profitable growth within the indulgence chocolate category. 

Understanding the chocolate experience

Left Blue Sky began by identifying whitespace to enhance consumers’ chocolate experience via analysis of competitive sets and food trends. Ethnographies and shop-a-longs with chocolate passionistas explored the meaning of chocolate indulgence moments and mapped participants’ sensorial experiences. The perspectives shared led to understanding the fundamental attitudinal and value differences between milk and dark chocolate consumers. Insights were used to kick-start ideation on ten brand platforms and one hundred and eighty product concepts. Product concepts, visuals, copy, and packaging were refined using four waves of consumer feedback from focus group testing. 

Developing new platforms and products 

Based on a deep understanding of indulgent chocolate experiences, Mars and Left Blue Sky defined a new premium chocolate category and designed four new brands and twelve new products to feed a 3-5 year incubation pipeline.