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00:00this is our rather large cracker
00:06Angus Thurwell co-founder of Hotel Chocolat has already written his letter to Santa asking that
00:16he wins the annual battle to sell millions of pounds worth of his high-quality Christmas
00:21chocolates Christmas is huge it is you know like a total military campaign the Christmas
00:29chocolate game is the most high stakes out there with just weeks to go until Christmas
00:38Day the starting gun is fired what does everybody do at Christmas drink too much
00:47eat too much and chocolates really part of that fun should we have one this is a rivalry that
00:58began over 80 years ago who didn't in the UK have a tin of roses or Quality Street on their sofa at
01:09Christmas those two brands competed head-to-head it was always who would win the battle of Christmas
01:16and as new brands emerged nothing is more prestigious than gold you're buying an experience
01:25the fight for the Christmas chop top spot grew tougher than ever you know if you didn't make
01:33your Christmas numbers you weren't going to make the year there was a daily battle and we all had
01:38sales targets what's at stake if you get it wrong at Christmas um millions of pounds this is the story of the
01:47race to be the number one chocolate at Christmas the story of Christmas chocolates began in the early 20th
02:03century a time when box chocolate was reserved for the elite normal people didn't get a look in up until
02:11the 20s and 30s there was only imported chocolate and imported chocolate was obviously very expensive they
02:20called them fancy boxes but it was too expensive for the average person to buy a fancy box would set you
02:28back 100 shillings that was 10 weeks rent for an average family but one man in the north of England had a plan to bring
02:38his famous confectionary to the masses his name was John McIntosh they called him the toffee king McIntosh just came up with
02:50these new ideas to do things that never been done before toffee is less expensive to make so the clever thing in a sense is that
02:57combining chocolates and toffees was big was to be able to bring the cost down to make it more affordable in 1936 the
03:05Macintosh is presented their chocolate covered toffees in a low-cost yet attractive box for working-class
03:12families they wanted a name that gave an air of class and branding that evoked nostalgia they called the new
03:20assortment Quality Street placing the individual chocolates in a box was quite expensive to do from
03:31a production point of view so he invested in new technology to try to individually wrap the sweets
03:36so he is the first person to actually create what we call twist wrap which is that wrapping the sweets as
03:42they're being produced and by individually wrapping them and putting them in a tin it meant the overall
03:48cost was brought down it was pretty revolutionary a lot of the growth of the chocolate market is about
03:55coming up with new ways of presenting chocolates and what Quality Street offered the public was something
04:04that was not as expensive as a fancy box of chocolates but had the variety and the centers
04:12Macintosh wanted the opening of a tin of Quality Street to be a feast for the senses and a special moment for
04:21the whole family look at that Christmas Christmas in a tin for you and it's got all your favorites the trusty
04:32purple one and of course my own personal favorite the chocolate orange crunch which I introduced into
04:39the assortment in 2001 still tastes just as good it's colorful it's therefore attractive everything
04:52is color-coded so you know what your favorites are you don't have to look anymore for most people you
04:57know a tin of Quality Street at Christmas is part of Christmas even the sort of the squeak that the
05:04rappers make it's the sound and the smells and everything else it's really all the senses all of
05:10those things I think are imbued in our memory of Christmases everyone has their own personal favorite
05:15because that was part of the fun of Christmas is trying to not be left with all the ones at the
05:19bottom of the tin that you didn't like at just two shillings a tin they cost 50 times less than the
05:27fancy boxes working-class families could now pick from over 18 different sweets including some long
05:35forgotten flavors like gooseberry cream and fig fancy but one iconic chocolate became a firm favorite
05:42the purple one is the sweet that was generally what people preferred within within quality street
05:50one of the things is when you open it up it actually looks like a brazil nut and that's because
05:56originally it had a brazil nut in the center of it but during the second world war they couldn't get
06:02hold of any brazil nut so they replaced it with a hazelnut it's still a hazelnut in there but it's
06:08retained that kind of shape Mackintosh's quality street assortment stunned their confectionery
06:17competitors and Britain's biggest chocolate company Cadbury's mounted a robust response my grandfather
06:26used to say nothing is too good for the public so the chocolate was very high quality but very affordable
06:34after a period of intense development to create their own assortment in 1938 Cadbury's launched roses no
06:44toffees but 15 rather exotic flavors from pineapple to pistachio all covered in the brand's trademark glass
06:52and a half dairy milk chocolate what better present can you have than roses the two Titans went head to
07:03head costing the same and trying to sell to the same households and they were about to make a
07:09profound realization both Mackintosh and Cadbury noticed that the sales of their chocolate increased
07:16massively in the run-up to Christmas roses and quality street opened up a new segment of the market
07:22quality street but very much for family sharing box of chocolates and that's what they built their
07:30reputation around roses were much more chocolatey assortment with some nice nuts you know this felt
07:36a bit more old-fashioned even even then the big difference between roses and quality street is there
07:44are a lot of toffees in there and there are no toffees in the roses that aren't chocolate covered I think
07:50there was a lot of overlap but effectively you probably did have them appealing to sort of
07:54different households you know despite the country being divided between the two alluring assortments
08:01for decades quality street consistently maintained a lead in the market ahead of roses but in the 1950s
08:09the competition became ferocious as the two rivals began selling to us directly in our living rooms
08:15in 1958 Mackintosh quickly established quality street as the masters of joyful and comic advertising a
08:26competitor that's so close you have to kind of get into the psyche a little bit of what you think
08:31they're gonna they're gonna do next roses were quick to respond with their own seductive sales pitch
08:37I think hazelnut for John and fruit and nut caramel for Jim and my favorite raspberry cream but quality
08:49street comfortably outstripped their rivals marketing became you know really important and particularly at
08:57Christmas that was the critical period that's where you really won or lost at Christmas so over the next
09:0320 years both brands spent small fortunes on their Christmas campaigns but it was quality street who
09:09were top of the tree with their comic crooner ads if you're going to keep your brand as the most popular
09:25brand in that segment of the market then advertising helps it was always a dogfight between quality
09:33street and roses every year who would win the battle of Christmas but then over 50 years after their
09:40launch roses finally managed to move the dial with one of their most famous jingles thank you with
09:46Cadbury's roses the thing that I admired about roses was there thank you very much campaign and we never
09:53had that quite the same and on quality street but certainly I think that was a big part of why roses grew as
10:00strongly as it did the thank you very much campaign was a huge hit and by the end of 1990 roses had
10:07inched ahead of quality street beating them to the top spot for the first time in their history so thank you
10:14good roses in this two-horse race Cadbury's roses were ahead by a nose but whilst these two brands were obsessed
10:25without doing each other after half a century of dominating the market between them serious
10:31competition was on the horizon people were prepared to pay more for boxed chocolates so they were looking
10:41for perhaps a more expensive presentation if there is no innovation markets are going to decline and people
10:51were looking for something new it's the 1980s a time of glamour image and excess Britain has pulled itself out of a
11:14recession and consumer spending is at an all-time high the last Saturday before Christmas saw the
11:21usual late rush for the presents with more money about the big confectioners set their sights on a more
11:26grown-up market people who wanted a little sophistication here we go that's your after eight storyboard
11:40oh she brings back memories at Roundtree Mackintosh Nick Hewison was responsible for after eight and
11:50persuading us to eat more of the wafer-thin mints especially at Christmas opening shot a jungle type
11:59scene but then suddenly you're going through an open window and you go from jungle into sophisticated dinner
12:05party and that's when we start observing the different guests eating their after eights in different ways here we
12:13see a challenge to the dominant male who's clearly marked his territory after eights
12:19ambitious ad campaigns summed up the cultural shift towards chocolate as a sophisticated gift for your host
12:26after eight were very very different from the big Irish boxes of chocolates compared to that it was aimed
12:37at you might call aspiring adults it was about smart glamorous people and the advertising in a sense reflected
12:46it's like the after eight minutes deliciously dark and cool and slender in that marvellously elegant box
12:54after eight added another occasion that people said right after eight fits that occasion which roses doesn't
13:04in the 1980s after eight found themselves masters of the Christmas market as a leading sharing box for
13:14special occasions their sales rose to 27 million pounds the minty masterpiece had actually been on round trees
13:27books since 1962 dreamt up by the top-secret creme experimentation department at the company's York factory
13:36the wrong trees up to then I'd never attempted to make or anyone else around that I know of in England
13:44such a kind of sweetest thin mint is it's all right making a nice heavy bar it's easy but when you come
13:51to a way for thin mint then it becomes very difficult and to acquire that kind of skills it took us some time
13:58all good ideas start with melting chocolate which is what we're going to do but the real secret to
14:08really innovative product development is combining flavor appearance and texture and what we call
14:16mouthfeel how are those flavors released in the mouth pairing chocolate and mint was nothing new but
14:22ensuring the liquid mint center had just the right amount of ooze within a perfectly balanced chocolate
14:27flavor was rather more scientific
14:31now the critical breakthrough for developing the after eight mint was to add an enzyme which meant that you could make a
14:39hardened mint fondant and then when the mint is covered the enzyme goes to work and after a period of time it'll soften
14:47now imagine if you can this is happening at speed these are dozens and dozens of these after eights
14:55spinning down a production line after eights top-secret enzyme only makes the mint gooey around three days after being covered in the chocolate
15:09right we're at the final stage that's pretty good that is a really nice thin layer of mint at their height round trees were producing over a billion of these minty squares each year all individually encased in their own classy
15:37monogrammed envelope
15:39monogrammed envelope
15:43after eight was an innovation
15:49so this was uh i wish we had been the ones that developed after eight but full marks to round trees they developed it and and it did very well
15:59but i don't want to talk too much about the competition
16:06but the minty squares ascendance was about to be halted by a chocolate gladiator from italy
16:13italy
16:17very british taste the mint is overwhelming and in a sense um rather simple
16:29italy
16:31christian walter is a titan of the european food industry and as head of ferrero rocher was a driving force behind supercharging the brand's global success
16:41the british market is in europe the biggest one
16:43so that's why obviously for any guy who is in the chocolate business
16:47you can't be out of the uk even if competition was very strong ferrero rocher was launched in 1982 by the same confectioners behind nutella and kinder egg
17:01the divine treat took its name from inventor michele ferrero and a religious site in france
17:09ferrero started to develop a recipe of this magic combination of cocoa and hazelnuts
17:18and it gives you this kind of light feeling instead of a heavy chocolate
17:23and this magic recipe is the reason why they're so loved
17:30launched in the uk in 1983
17:33the arrival of the smooth italian
17:35spelt trouble for the traditional british chocolate boxes and the cozy domestic market
17:41so they are quite flashy
17:43perhaps a little bit too flashy for some tastes
17:51it's a great product
17:52it has all those elements in terms of the ritual of opening that packaging
17:56and then a beautifully wrapped nutty confection
18:00underneath that foil and that little glassine cup
18:04the italians wanted to appeal not just to after dinner indulgence
18:08but to a total aspiration for the high life
18:11to get the edge on established competitor after eight
18:14they developed clear packaging that would keep their golden baubles on display at all times
18:20the market was lacking innovation the newness which rocher came to it was a transparency
18:27to see the product and the gold wrapping nothing is more prestigious than gold obviously
18:34the timing of ferrero's arrival with their luxury high-class treat was spot-on
18:42we've got higher incomes higher employment and people going on foreign holidays
18:51traveling a lot becoming a lot more familiar with foreign sounding names and not reacting to saying
18:57oh it's foreign muck or whatever going oh my goodness actually that's really good
19:01the 80s was a perfect time because people were open to new things
19:07super charging their appeal to our love of the high life
19:10ferrero rocher even suggested that by indulging in their product we were joining the ranks of the international elite
19:18excellent
19:21monsieur with this rocher already spoiling us
19:23ferrero rocher
19:25nothing is more festive occasion than an ambassador's meeting no
19:30you kind of participate in a way to a lifestyle which is very very glamorous in a sense
19:39oh um we know we're not going to eat it at the ambassador's reception you're going to eat it in front of daytime television
19:47but people liked it there's a sense of humor to it and it created massive awareness
19:53for raro soon established themselves as key luxury chocolate players
19:59buying up around a third of the world's supply of hazelnuts to meet demand for their chocolate treats
20:05by the end of the decade ferrero rocher's sales were over 20 million pounds a year
20:10biting into cadbury and roundtree mackintosh's profits
20:14for the brits the sweet market had soured
20:18whilst not a mint product therefore not a direct competitor
20:22bingo it's a competitor right because suddenly it's a bit more glamorous than a box of after eight
20:28it's new and new is also good it looks more expensive
20:34and so that's where you would have been going ah okay
20:38this is competing against us we're we're losing market share
20:43facing an increasingly competitive global market
20:46by the end of the decade roundtree mackintosh were in need of a sugar hit
20:51the swiss food and confectionery company nestle has succeeded in its takeover bid for roundtree
20:59following their takeover of roundtree mackintosh in 1988
21:03nestle brought with them a whole catalogue of sweet treats from europe
21:07but how could they topple the golden nutty pyramid
21:11nestle had one foreign product that they thought could come to britain and go toe to toe with ferrero rocher
21:19the nestle portfolio of brands includes a fantastic italian brand barchi and funnily enough a bit like ferrero rocher
21:27it has a hazelnut
21:29meaning kisses in italian
21:33barchi looked more than a little familiar
21:35we developed a very similar packaging to ferrero rocher it was a transparent box head on head
21:43directly competing with ferrero rocher
21:45in september 1991 hoping for a christmas miracle nestle roundtree splashed the cash on advertising
21:53in the countdown to christmas they spent double ferrero's annual advertising budget
21:59the team at ferrero took notice barchi was certainly a response to the success of rocher
22:07barchi has got it's got a nougat hazelnut i mean i love it it's bloody fantastic but a problem quickly arose
22:15barchi how do you pronounce it bacchi and i think that was one of the issues you call it bacchi
22:21no i don't know that it's not that's not sexy bacchi i don't think we we saw it as a danger to rocher
22:29the product was very close to to rocher the chocolate the hazelnut but uh
22:35didn't reach the the sales which uh which rocher had and sure enough the british public gave barchi the kiss off
22:46at the end of the day the sales were not as expected and it was it was removed from the market
22:57the launch of barchi was an embarrassing failure but nestle roundtree and the other big players
23:04were about to face an even bigger threat from a major name that decided to make their first real play into the christmas market
23:11if there's one thing the british consumer wants it's new and that's where we thought hang on we can give them that
23:22it's 1997 british shoppers are obsessed with the years must-have gifts what they don't know is that
23:37one of their favorite christmas trees is going to come in teeny tiny packages and this new era brings
23:44fads in miniature size there we go what a lovely morning while some old favorites sit on the shelf
23:53roses and quality street were well loved well respected brands but to be perfectly honest they
24:02probably got a little bit complacent as we got into the nineties the brand did start to feel a little bit
24:09dusty because it's a traditional brand you know rooted in the 1930s the market for roses declined
24:16because people were looking for a wider variety of chocolate and they were about to get it
24:24one confectionery giant has so far stayed silent on chocolate assortments at christmas mars
24:39they might have dominated the chocolate market in the u.s but in the mid-1990s mars was still growing
24:45in the uk one woman was tasked with taking mars to even greater heights the market at the time was
24:54quite traditional boring i think and so my challenge was really how could i try and grow this market for
25:00mars and grow our position in the market michelle frost has been one of mars lead innovators for over
25:0730 years she knows chocolate and that inspiration can bubble up at any moment i usually get my best
25:17ideas while i'm sitting in the bath and there's always a joke at work oh god michelle's been in the
25:21bath again watch out everybody anyway i was uh having my bath mulling this conundrum what could i do that
25:27was different and then i just it just dawned on me i said i know what we need to do we need to use the
25:34the chocolates that everybody loves mars factories were already churning out over a billion chocolate
25:42bars a year and michelle thought the answer to success might be hiding in plain sight
25:48mars has always done a lot of playing around with sizes of the brand so we've you know started off with
25:54a standard size mars bar and then we bought out king size bar which i think is called a duo these days
26:00we had snack size bars and then we had fun size bars so i was thinking actually it's not so unusual to
26:07take this one step further and go for a miniature if i'd have been sitting in mars i would like to have
26:13thought i'd have done it a bit sooner pretty obvious no-brainer for mars mars were taking a huge gamble
26:21going head to head against the traditional favorites quality street and roses they'd need a cracker of a name to
26:27succeed i then had to think about oh gosh what we're going to call this thing there were two names that
26:33stuck out for me one was celebrations and one was jamboree so celebrations could have been called
26:39jamboree which equally is a lovely name i think but celebrations just summed up the occasion that we wanted
26:46people to use this product for with a name that promised a party celebrations just needed a snazzy outfit to
26:53grab the public's attention we came up with this idea of using the logos from the brands as part
27:01of the celebration so the b is the b that you see on bounty the s is the s from the mars bar and not
27:11many people realize that because they got so used to seeing that's that's the celebration because they
27:15don't really know how it started at christmas time what's the reason we all go home it's to celebrate
27:21it's to celebrate so having a brand cold celebrations my goodness you could say with hindsight
27:29it could only succeed here's a sweet little story here's a mars bar it's had a little baby look
27:37and in fact mars has shrunk all its products and put them in this box oh there's my pack
27:43mars thought it was time for the good times but the competition weren't that impressed
27:49and you know i thought quite a nice selection of chocolates you know some of the ones that i quite
27:55liked in there but i thought they would have probably done something a bit more innovative
27:59i think the interesting thing here is that mars is going for such a big launch 10 million pound launch
28:04and it was supposed to be you can see a spectacular launch the train bursting through the banner um but it
28:09was something of a damp squib as you can see there so they spent half a million pounds on that train alone
28:15that's right i don't remember that train oh that's quite funny
28:23the minute you open it you've got the excitement of thinking what is in here celebrations had one
28:34practical challenge to overcome how to keep the appealing look of the traditional twist wrap
28:39while packaging with a cheaper technique called flow wrap what we just thought could happen is that
28:46you'd just be able to pull it and it would open but as i'm demonstrating that doesn't work so what
28:53we then did on the back was we put a little nick in the back of the wrapper so one pull and out comes
29:01a perfectly formed miniature mars bar and this one i may even finish off because it's delicious
29:11celebrations exploded onto shop shelves winning over younger customers who loved the miniature but
29:21familiar treats within just two years it was the number one chocolate brand at christmas overtaking
29:28quality street and roses for the first time in over 60 years it's like oh okay it was kind of a big
29:37shift for them um and we were the market leading brand and now you're kind of looking at a three-way
29:45competition or battle it was a massive cause for concern of course when you're the brand manager
29:50of quality street and that's happening you know that's not what you want on your watch was i angry
29:55i'm not sure i was angry but it was a case of how the hell do we deal with with something like this
30:01we had a rate of sale on celebrations that had completely overtaken quality street completely
30:10overtaken roses and it was the number one product in the gifting arena and and deemed a great success
30:20by all even reluctantly our competitors i'm sure they were feeling pretty happy with themselves having
30:27entered there from you know a zero-sum start but just as cadbury's had taken on quality street by
30:35launching roses in the 30s they weren't going to let mars have the party to themselves to nobody's
30:43surprise or shock it didn't take cadbury's very long to say oh hang on a minute maybe we could try to do
30:52this we work in confectionery it's always competitive we're not going to just let mars own that segment of
30:59the market that would have been done monique carter was cadbury's head of radical innovation and in
31:07charge of the counter-attack against mars we had had the benefit of actually seeing what mars had done with
31:16celebrations we also had the benefit of a lot of experience in box chocolates so it was a kind of
31:23case of well how do you figure out for cadbury what is our appropriate proposition in this marketplace
31:30cadbury spent two years developing the products they hoped would combat mars a long time to wait when
31:36your rivals profits are soaring and they've taken 29 of the chocolate market but by 1999 heroes were ready
31:45to hit the shelves along comes heroes from cadbury's which is what in the trade we would call a looky likey
32:02i certainly felt that you know we didn't just copy
32:07what i was trying hard to do in developing heroes was come up with something that was much more informal
32:12still special still something that people really wanted because it's from cadbury's
32:18and then in the tv advertising we were really clear about you know this is the sort of product that
32:23is so attractive to people that you know if you've got a tub of this the party's going to be around
32:28you know everybody's going to want to kind of hang out with you and be with you
32:31cadbury was so sure their product would succeed at an industry launch they set annual target sales of a
32:38hundred million nearly double what celebrations had achieved in their first year
32:48it was a big production shoot in la we took kind of a little icon that represented the different
32:56personalities of the brand so dairy milk was the king so he had an elvis cape and it you know worked
33:02really well cadbury's miniature heroes people magnet despite the hype early sales of heroes were seven
33:14million pounds lower than the figure achieved by celebrations i don't want to be disparaging about my
33:21competition but heroes arrived it wasn't a failure but nor was it anything like the success that
33:31celebrations had been so i think it's probably fair to say that we weren't scared when we saw what heroes
33:40were and we'll let the consumer be the judge of it which they always are both products were great for
33:50the um twist wrap share market you know they both you know helped really galvanize it into double digit growth
33:56the whole game has changed because you've got different competitors different consumers different
34:04packs different prices and that's when the rubber hits the road you know how do you how do you respond
34:10to that with the arrival of celebrations and heroes families now had four affordable sharing assortments
34:19to choose from but lurking around the corner was a dapper new kid on the block exclusive artisan chocolate
34:28was about to take a bite out of the traditional christmas market tailoring fantastical and delicious
34:34products for those willing to pay more
34:48it's a new millennium and the traditional sharing tin has managed to stay at the heart of the british
34:55family christmas since it was first created despite fierce competition from more exotic rivals
35:04the key to that success has been maintaining an affordable price for the masses
35:12but whilst the price tag may seem familiar something was different
35:21if you are planning to go shopping this morning you might want to think twice before buying a box of
35:26chocolates well earlier this week a tweet by an itv journalist went viral when he said his quality
35:31streets weren't up to scratch and said he'd found just four four purple chocolates compared to eleven
35:38orange ones the cost of ingredients and production has risen steadily since the 1990s and by 2019
35:48quality street roses and celebrations had shrunk the size of their tubs by 40 percent
35:54so i feel it's deceptive why that why do you think that because i would be presuming that i would
36:01by paying that i would be getting the same that i bought in the past unless it was in a different
36:06package and an obviously different size someone really wants something they'll pay for the price no
36:13matter what so if you um make them smaller they'll just buy double the amount for more money and that's
36:19what the end they know that that's what they do one of the interesting things every year was we had a
36:24league table of the sweets that were most popular and then next to it was the was the cost of each
36:30of those and what you found was the sweets that were most popular were the most expensive so the purple
36:37one the green triangle and one of the challenges every year was how do you put more of the sweets
36:42people want in the assortment but do it at the right price you're constantly trying to get that best
36:48balance of the best quality and the things that people love at the best possible price because
36:54you know it has to be an affordable brand the brands maintained they still offer good value for
37:03money and that it is the retailer who sets the price whilst the consumer demanded the traditional
37:09tins stay cheap by the mid-noughties there was an emerging desire for something on the opposite end of
37:15the scale i think people's expectations of what they want from products these days are different
37:22people's standard of living has generally increased people's quality expectations i think
37:28have increased over that period of time the way the chocolate market has matured there probably
37:35is a niche in the market for very expensive chocolates
37:39hoping to capitalize on the consumer willing to pay more our hotel chocolat its co-founder angus thurwell
37:50is on a mission to bring real luxury to christmas and elevate the chocolate market
37:58to be innovative and original is a key a key part of her chocolate's dna we realized that there was
38:05uh you know a clear gap for something a cut above what was currently offered in in chocolate and
38:12confectionery hotel chocolat didn't want to cheapen their products by selling them next to their
38:18competitors in supermarket aisles and instead they opened up their own specialist stores where they
38:25could write the rules
38:26and their ad campaigns promoted their products as unusually desirable when giving a gift be sure to
38:35let go there you are when we took a look at what was going on at christmas with more established
38:46chocolate brands what we saw in the market was the typical recipes for milk chocolate the biggest
38:53ingredient was sugar the second biggest ingredient would be milk and then the smallest ingredient
39:00was actually the hero the cocoa bean we just think it should be called confectionery not chocolate
39:06we wanted to bring an alternative choice to the market and that's what we did
39:12from the outset hotel chocolat wanted complete domination of the festive market
39:24each year they release over 50 christmas themed products costing from a few pounds to 300.
39:32we really have thrown ourselves completely into celebrating christmas and we think about it you know every
39:38single week of the year if you get it right it can be a very big market
39:45the majority of chocolate brands would go christmassy by at the maximum put a red bow on it
39:51well it doesn't quite cut it so we wanted every single molecule in our christmas chocolates to shout
39:58christmas and at the heart of hotel chocolat's christmas is sharing with the grand wreath box for 80 pounds
40:08the idea is when you open it up it creates a you know a kind of ooh and an ah moment
40:19and all the aromas coming off from the from the chocolate we've got a champagne truffle here as
40:24well this is dusted in icing sugar the way we make it is we literally pour bottles of champagne into
40:32um chocolate and cream
40:41very different from you know a quality street type type product you know very high quality what i'd say
40:48is the the thickness of the chocolate is the thing that really stands out there the thickness of the
40:54chocolate casing because you know chocolate is an expensive ingredient
41:05you're really tasty um the champagne
41:10probably you eat one but not five
41:13but these luxury ingredients come with a hefty price tag with their merry christmas chocolate box
41:22costing 16 pounds it is more than three times the cost of a tub of quality street
41:29the price has not deterred the british public nearly 20 years since opening its doors hotel chocolat's
41:36innovative range produces annual sales of 240 million with over 124 shops globally it may be handcrafted but
41:45on a mass-produced scale
41:50hotel chocolat have been innovative in the box chocolate market
41:56and for a brand like roses the challenge is how to
42:01keep the brand relevant when people looking for more differentiation they're looking for something different
42:11if innovation is the key to winning in the business world how do you modernize when so
42:16much of your success is tied to traditional roots everybody's taste is changing all the time
42:22if you're going to keep your brand relevant you've got to reflect that changing
42:26uh nature of what people now want
42:35and in a bid to bring roses into the 21st century in 2015 cadbury made the controversial decision to
42:42change their wrappers they ditched the traditional twist wrap they had been using since 1938 and started
42:51to employ more modern cheaper packaging known as the flow wrap
42:59i'm not going to be too critical of what my old firm have done flow wrap as a way of presenting it is
43:06not as good as the twist wrap you know you can push them through the wrapping machine much more quickly
43:12if you flow wrap so i would say that was a very controversial decision if it was my choice
43:18i would have stayed with twist wrap because of that personal feel compared with the more
43:25mechanical way of wrapping which is flower
43:32it's not the only thing that's changed about these traditional tins over the years
43:37as part of the sort of christmas launch every year you know you'd be thinking about
43:41how do i remove some of those least favored sweets out of it and create some new ones
43:49since their creation in 1936 quality street have had over 20 new flavors come and go
43:56whilst roses have changed their selection only for the public to demand they stick to the original
44:02lineup every now and then we would drop out one of the centers because we thought that was the one that
44:08was the least popular the lime cordial or the coconut center and you immediately got from consumers
44:19complaints about why did you drop out the coconut that was my favorite one
44:25but there is one ingredient that has not changed
44:30nostalgia is a very powerful thing
44:38people get emotional about confectionery because when you think about it and your own associations
44:44with it it brings back lots of powerful memories
44:50brands that people are familiar with that they've known for a long time their parents have known them
44:56they've got a history a tradition those are the qualities that appeal to people so roses is not going to
45:03get away anytime soon quality street it's not about are these the best tasting chocolates and toffees you
45:10can get but it's about family it's about christmas it's about the rituals it's very much of the fabric of
45:17who we are and i know this is something that a lot of brands have started to appreciate more
45:24more than 90 years after the first assorted chocolates appeared in shops there are now more brands than
45:33ever to choose from with hundreds of millions in sales made each year it seems sharing a chocolate
45:40has become part of our christmas traditions yeah people are buying into more than just the the sweets
45:47they're buying into those emotional memories they've got of their own childhood and family kind of growing up
46:17so
46:26you
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