cobranding

Milka and Côte d’Or are both really strong chocolate brand belonging to a common group. As you can have judged from our blog, those two brands are complementary and do not steal customers one from another because they do not address to the same target and don’t have the same positioning.

While Milka is about sweet milk chocolate, wanting to share tenderness, happiness and friendly sharing moment; Côte d’Or is more seen as a dark chocolate for those who want a « selfish » tasting moment with an intense chocolate.

Those strategic decisions and implications can be seen in the logo and packaging. Milka with a mauve color packaging and a cow as a symbol for authenticity, tenderness and nature. Côte d’Or with a dark black and red packaging with an elephant symbol of the memory and strength.

When looking at their product range, Milka is present on several segments like the tablet, biscuits, ice cream, cheese… They want to be present at every good moment of the customer life. While Côte d’Or is meanly focused on the tablet segment wanting to make the customer discover the pleasure of a qualitative product based on good and specific ingredients.

Their prices are quite similar depending on the kind of tablet the consumer wants to buy.

Their communication plan follow the same logic, Milka is all about sharing tender moment with your loved ones –> the missing piece is the great example of the kind of communication campaign they use. Côte d’Or is about the quality and taste of the product, their new chocolate tablet with a specific shape, Côte d’Or wants to break the code of the tasting session. By its recent communication campaign “A world without chocolate”, it wants to emphasis on its/everyone environmental impact and raise awareness among its consumers.

They have the same distribution channel: supermarkets and hypermarkets (80%) and automatic distributors, petrol stations, bakeries & groceries, cinema, restaurant… (20%).

Since they don’t target the same customer, their competitors are different. Kinder and Cadbury for Milka, Nestlé and Lindt for Côte d’Or. The challenge is probably higher for Milka due to the recent arrival of Cadbury which as exactly the same colors and aim to have the same positioning. Milka wants to possess the word “Tenderness” while Cadbury wants “joy”… they are fighting on the same playground and dispute the same consumers.

To conclude those brands are clearly identified and separated in the consumer mind because Mondelez International succeeded to develop them in two different realms. That is probably the reason why they both have a positive Customer Base Brand Equity.
As chocolate lovers we certainly hope that they will keep developing and innovating so we can enjoy new tasty product in the years to come.

The Chocol4te Lovers’ team

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« Co branding is interpreted as a brand extension in order » to leverage the value of the brand… to take the brand into a new market » (Blackett, Boad, p133). Company wants to make consumers more aware of their brands by doing some co-branding. The appreciation of the co-branded product relies on the previous knowledge of both brands and their products. This is the reason why brand try to create co branded product when both brand can us the image and notoriety of the other brand.

If we take the example of Milka, people love this chocolate, the main brand value is « sharing a tenderness moment ». Philadelphia is an industrial brand of cream cheese. Both belong to the Mondelez International Group but they have different strategy marketing. The group decided to regroup this two brands in order to create a chocolate spread in order to develop theirs awareness and directly attack the leading Nutella the French Market.

Mondelez want to create originals products by using Milka brand because it has a notoriety of 99% in France. Actually, more than 1 family out of 3 eats Milka chocolate every day. »

Another example should be Côte d’Or. Indeed, due to its strong brand Côte d’Or represents the pleasure to eat a dark chocolate; this is why Yoplait, Eo and Lu try to do some co-branding. The product did not last long either due to a lack on marketing consistency or not wanted by the consumer but the purpose was clear… use the notoriety of one brand to make their consumer know and try the other brand. They tried to be present on new segment and create or develop the demand.