How Splendid Made Dark Chocolate a Grown-Up Moment in Israel

Why BBR Saatchi & Saatchi Built the Splendid Strategy Around Acquired Taste

Splendid operates in a confectionery category defined by intense competition from both global and regional players. According to GlobalData, the global confectionery market was valued at approximately US$158.4 billion in 2015, with a forecast compound annual growth rate of 3.6% through to 2020. Within that landscape, the top five global confectionery brands — Dairy Milk and Milka from Mondelez, Snickers from Mars, Trident from Mondelez, and Ferrero Rocher from Ferrero — collectively represented only 7.1% of the global confectionery market in 2015, according to GlobalData, which underscores how fragmented and competitive the category remains even at scale. For a regional Israeli brand like Splendid, competing head-to-head on reach or distribution against those multinationals is not viable; competing on cultural and emotional specificity is.

BBR Saatchi & Saatchi's strategic planner Lora Goichman and the creative leadership identified acquired taste as the most defensible territory for dark chocolate in the Israeli market. The insight is both universal and precise: children reliably dislike dark chocolate, and adults reliably understand why they once did. That gap in experience becomes the product's proof of quality. Rather than positioning Splendid against direct dark chocolate competitors through claims of cocoa percentage or origin provenance — the approach favoured by premium European entrants — the campaign stakes its authority on a shared human developmental truth. The 2013 campaign 'When you grow up you'll get it' had already seeded this platform in Israel, according to Clapboard Ad Archive, giving the 2015 film an existing audience primed to recognise and extend the brand's voice. The strategic continuity across two years signals deliberate brand-building rather than opportunistic creative, a distinction that matters in a snacks market where short-cycle promotional advertising is the norm.

Director Roy Raz and the Craft Behind Splendid's Reactive Dark Chocolate Film

Director Roy Raz helmed the 'Dark chocolate' film for Splendid, bringing an observational sensibility to a concept that depends entirely on authentic, uncoached reaction. The campaign's creative direction was led by Executive Creative Director Nadav Pressman, VP Creative Director Idan Regev, and Creative Director Sharon Refael at BBR Saatchi & Saatchi Israel, with strategic planning by Lora Goichman, as documented by Clapboard Ad Archive.

The film belongs to a well-established genre of reaction-based advertising — most recognisably associated internationally with formats in which genuine participants encounter a product for the first time — but the Splendid execution distinguishes itself through editorial restraint. The children's responses are allowed to play out without comic exaggeration or heavy post-production intervention. Grimaces, hesitations, and muted declarations of displeasure carry the argument precisely because they are not manipulated into broader comedy. The craft decision to trust the footage reflects confidence in the strategic insight: the reactions do not need amplification because the audience already knows they are true.

The single-asset film format — one piece of content released in August 2015 in Israel — also reflects a production philosophy of concentration over proliferation. Rather than fragmenting the idea across multiple executions, the creative team invested in one tightly constructed piece capable of standing alone and travelling organically. That structural choice proved prescient: the film reached more than one and a half million YouTube views, as recorded by Clapboard Ad Archive, a figure that indicates organic sharing well beyond the brand's owned Israeli audience base. The tagline 'Splendid chocolate — when you grow up you'll get it' closes the film with a line that functions simultaneously as brand promise, gentle provocation, and cultural wink — a rare three-way efficiency in confectionery advertising.

Splendid's Dark Chocolate Film Reaches One and a Half Million Views Without Verified Paid Media Data

No verified third-party performance data for the 'Dark chocolate' campaign beyond YouTube reach figures is publicly available. The campaign's documented reach — more than one and a half million YouTube views and nearly five hundred audience comments, as recorded by Clapboard Ad Archive — nonetheless provides meaningful structural evidence of effectiveness for a single-asset film released by a regional Israeli confectionery brand in August 2015.

Reaching one and a half million views from a single film in a market the size of Israel is a materially significant outcome. Israel's population at the time of the campaign's release was approximately eight and a half million people, according to the Israeli Central Bureau of Statistics, meaning the film's documented view count represents a reach equivalent to a substantial share of the national adult population, without accounting for international viewers drawn by the campaign's universal premise. The volume of audience comments — nearly five hundred — further indicates active engagement rather than passive consumption, a distinction that matters when evaluating the persuasive depth of confectionery advertising.

Structurally, the campaign's effectiveness rests on three reinforcing decisions: strategic continuity with the 2013 platform, creative restraint that lets authentic reaction carry the argument, and a tagline precise enough to function as a standalone brand statement. Each element reduces the cognitive load required for the audience to arrive at the intended brand association. For a snacks brand competing in a fragmented confectionery market against globally resourced competitors, that efficiency of communication represents a durable creative asset, not a one-cycle result. The Clapboard Score of 72 out of 100 reflects this balance of creative clarity and measurable audience response.