MONDELEZ
Cocoa Life
Mondelēz International is the world's largest chocolate company with brands such as Cadbury, OREO, Cote D'Or, Toblerone, and Milka, just to name a few. For years Mondelēz had been telling brand stories of joy, from lilac dairy cows to cream filled Easter eggs. Now they wanted to share a more important story: the story of their cocoa farmers and their families in their production origins.
In 2012 Mondelēz International initiated a $400M program to help positively transform the lives of their cocoa growers and future generations of cocoa growers, the environment, and cocoa communities. They came to CAA (Creative Artists Agency) Brand Studio to develop and grow their brand. With the cocoa farming process so disconnected from the advertising world of chocolate, it was our task to communicate to their audience in a new way. With chocolate brands and consumers spread around the globe, we needed to create something that would be universally understood and would speak to farming communities, partners, and local governments as well as chocolate consumers.
Cocoa Life is named for its positive, vibrant, human nature. The logo's multi-colored pod element represents the 5 beans that grow in every cocoa plant in the origins, and the 5 key areas of farming, community, youth, livelihoods and environment that Cocoa Life supports.
We worked to define, design and launch the Cocoa Life brand with farmers and their families at the heart of the message. As the Associate Design Director at CAA Brand Studio, I worked alongside the Chief Creative Officer to develop the strategy and set the look, feel and tone of the brand. I art directed brand photography, website design, and ad campaigns. We crafted a 100+ page brand playbook, style guide, and system of intuitive icons to easily condense the program's key elements and performance measures visually. We addressed the farmers’ challenges and conveyed Cocoa Life's impact through storytelling infographics. To tell the brand's holistic story and introduce the human faces of cocoa farming, I worked collaboratively to create an program introduction video and series of brand videos that highlighted each focus area of the program.
Result: With Cocoa Life’s success since launch, Mondelēz International is doubling down on on the program, investing an additional $600M through 2030, for a total investment of $1B. The program is supported by all of Mondelēz International's chocolate brands including Cadbury, Milka, and Marabou. With on package and digital advertising, Cocoa Life is working to raise awareness and provide accessible information to chocolate lovers everywhere. Additionally, our robust design and rich storytelling has sparked Mondelēz International's competitors to hyper-focus on their philanthropies.
Collaborated with: Chief Creative Officer: Alice Ann Wilson | Designer: Josh Pineda | Editor: Yesenia Higuera | Photographer/Director: Steve Weill
Playbook & Style Guide
Brand Introduction Video
Website
Infographic Progress Reports
WHAT MONDELEZ
INTERNATIONAL HAS TO SAY
“Sarah has been our lead designer bringing the Cocoa Life brand world to live. As the program evolved, so did our brand and Sarah was in the driver seat. Our brand identity and visualization is unique in the cocoa sustainability world, as it is vibrant and human. For our impact reporting Sarah supported with developing illustrations, icons and info graphics, bringing our data to live. She also developed two campaign ideas worked out in posters, stories and videos to bring the cocoa origins to our audience. Sarah is very solution-oriented, cooperative and always understands what we need very quickly. She is adaptive and flexible. Not always easy with a client who is on the other side of the world, she managed this brilliantly.”