Creating and Defining Luxury branding for a Start up launching exclusive hand crafted Chocolates- Le Divinoir

A passionate chef, a seasoned business guy and a plan to venture into the under explored, luxury chocolate market. This was pretty much the nature of brief when we sat for the first discussion with the team. The conversation flowed like melted chocolate, as we dived in for the factual information, the inspiration and the plans, that the team had in order to launch a brand. On offering were chocolate roches, exquisitely handcrafted using rich Belgian chocolate and best of Nuts, the kind, true chocolate connoisseurs would indulge in. First things first, we took time to understand our role in orchestrating this exercise to make a Brand come to life and realized that we pretty much had to give it a life, name it, shape it and nurture it further till it grows and finds a strong footing.

When it comes to chocolates, apart from the popular branded ones, homemade chocolates also form a large chunk of the category, and then there are high end, chef created ones that are available in the 5 star hotel patisserie. Ours was a quality that was at par with the 5 star ones with its rich texture and abundance of nuts.
As much as we dreamt of positioning the product into a niche, luxury chocolate brand, the most challenging part was the limited budget, every start up comes with until they become big. But we saw a great creative opportunity here and It was chocolate after all, so the team went all in. What we needed to drive home was the experience and not the product in this case. It was a blank canvas and we embarked to create a masterpiece. Starting from the name, since the key ingredient in our product was Belgian chocolate, we wanted to bring in a French connection to the brand name itself.

As mentioned the moment we got in the depth of the brief, one thought we agreed as a team, that we will create a brand of experience, a well crafted one, that will slowly lead it to take its position in the luxury segment. So the divine, indulgent experience was translated into a name that is unique and classy. Le Divinoir is a coined word, parts of it hinting at the divine experience, subtly blending with the dark side of indulgence with Noir’ meaning black in french. Another idea that we fixed on after multiple brainstorming was to create a beautiful monogram using the letter D and keeping the logo type more like a signature that would reflect the handcrafted virtue of the brand.
A svelte palette with deep purple and gold was selected as a primary and a bouquet of soothing tertiary color tints were identified for the secondary one. Less is more’ philosophy of design was applied to create a very distinct brand style be it selection
of fonts, texture and formats for packaging including the website look and feel.
For packaging, a sturdy box with magnetic closure was selected with a fine muslin pouch inside as a primary packaging. The idea was to give the consumer an immersive experience of diving into the rich product by unlocking the muslin string bag and also retaining the outer box for personal keep sake once the roches are consumed. The graphics therefore were minimal, just the monogram etched in gold on the top cover and the Logo type foil embossed, cutting across the front and side panel leading one to feel the packaging from every angle.
Today the digital canvass plays a greater role for a new brand to communicate to the right audiences and it was a key part of our branding strategy. Once the key assets of the brand were in place, it was storytelling time. We wanted the consumer to feel the passion that goes into making these exquisite roches and website was a great medium to do that. As brand custodians, we created an enticing launch campaign on digital and continue to create enigmatic content that talks about the divine chocolate eating experience. We recommended an exclusive amazon page to establish a premium presence on the most visited digital retail space. What more the brand started reaching out to the right consumers within a short span of the launch. That is when the idea of adding a layer of customization to the brand buying experience started brewing. Being positioned as a luxury chocolate brand, gifting is a great way of marketing and we have come up with elegant sleeves designed for some special gifting occasions to choose for, as a layer of customization.
We were delighted with how we have manifested the idea into a full fledged luxury chocolate brand that is being very well-received by the desired consumers and has turned as a creative dream come true project for us.

ClientLe DivinoirServicesPackaging DesignYear2020