Cherkizovo and Serviceplan Russia Shake Up Traditional Russian Sweets Category with Unconventional Product

Nov. 18, 2020

Every year on 5th October, Russians celebrate their children‘s teachers on Teacher’s Day, traditionally gifting them boxes of chocolates. Serviceplan Russia teamed up with Cherkizovo, leading Russian Producers of meat products, to put a unique spin on the traditional chocolate-giving, switching chocolates for ham with a new product named "Hamcolates". 

There are many different holidays in Russia, but it seems like there is one main gift that is given on every single one of them: chocolates, chocolates, chocolates. In Russia, traditionally more than 68% people choose chocolate for a gift, especially as a thankful gesture to teachers. So Teachers get swamped with chocolate boxes every autumn at the start of the school term, and with 1,225,000 teachers in Russia, that equates to a mountain of chocolates!

The unconventional ‘Hamcolates’ product was launched by Cherkizovo in Russia on Teacher’s Day, 5th October 2020.  Serviceplan Russia devised the concept of Cherkizovo’s new Hamcolates product, creating a packaging design in the style of a box of chocolates, but this time the box contained ham instead of chocolate. 

This assorted ham packaged in the style of a chocolate box was launched with a bang: just before Teacher’s Day, Serviceplan Russia seeded videos on social media representing Whats App chats of parents and teachers, which sparked a discussion about the not-so-sweet chocolates and created a social media buzz which people started sharing instantly.

People could order the Hamcolates online.

Immediately after Teacher’s Day, Cherkizovo launched ‘Candy Trade-in’, which invited teachers to exchange unwanted chocolates for brand-new packs of Hamcolates in O’KEY supermarkets. 550 boxes of unwanted chocolates were exchanged for Hamcolates in 2 days.  After the launch, Hamcolates started an smm campaign challenging any occasion for sweet gifts while offering the alternative solution of giving meat gifts in an ironic way. Maybe one day, meats really will become the new sweets.

Evgenia Arakbina, Executive Creative Director, Serviceplan Russia commented: 

“Creativity has no limits. It was a fun and pleasure to create provocative product concept, to work on its pack design and then to use the power of situational marketing to launch it. This is what represent our Übercreativity approach. And it is just a beginning.”

 

The communication strategy and creative materials for the campaign were developed by Serviceplan Russia, while PR and media support  was organized by Louder agency which is part of Serviceplan Group in Russia.

Cherkizovo Group is Russia’s largest manufacturer of meat products. The Group is a Top 3 producer in each of the Russian poultry, pork and processed meat markets. Cherkizovo Group encompasses nine full-cycle poultry production facilities, sixteen modern pork production facilities, eight meat processing plants, nine feed mills and 300,000 hectares of agricultural land. The Group’s key competitive edge is its vertically integrated business model, which includes all agricultural operations from grain growing to end-product manufacturing while also ensuring top quality across the production chain.