MelyPremiumChocolate×VisionAgency
We took over ad management and creative production for a premium chocolate brand built around gifting. A campaign calendar tied to gifting periods lifted click-through rate and revenue together; every €1 of spend returned €5.20 in revenue.
About the brand
A premium chocolate brand selling through its own e-commerce site. The range is mostly gift boxes, special-occasion sets and single bars. Most orders are not placed for the buyer's own use; they are bought as a gift for someone else.
When we started, the account had a single sales campaign and the budget flowed the same way all year. Product images were catalogue shots; no creative showed the product being given as a gift. In summer, shipping was suspended to some provinces because of the heat, yet ads kept running there and the spend was wasted.
Why they chose us
The brand's expectation from Vision Agency was clear: an ad calendar that does not miss gifting periods, and creatives that justify a premium price. A chocolate purchase is largely decided on the image; when the product photo is weak, click-through rate drops and cost per click rises. Both had to be fixed.
- Build a campaign calendar that concentrates budget on gifting periods
- Raise click-through rate with product and gift-box photography
- Stop wasted spend in provinces where shipping is suspended
The challenges we faced
The difficulty was not in the product itself but in how unevenly demand spread across the year and in the physical shipping conditions of chocolate. Four themes stood out on the advertising side:
Buyer and Consumer Differ
The person buying the box usually does not eat the chocolate; they give it away. Targeting people who like chocolate was not enough, so we built separate audiences around gift intent: birthdays, anniversaries and special occasions.
Demand Follows the Season
Most order volume clusters around Valentine's Day, Mother's Day and New Year. Spreading the budget evenly across twelve months left the peak underfunded and the quiet months inefficient. There was no date plan behind the campaigns.
Heat Limits Shipping
In summer chocolate cannot be shipped above a certain temperature and dispatch stops to some provinces. As long as ads keep running there, clicks do not convert into orders and the spend returns nothing. Location breakdowns had never been used in the campaign setup.
Premium Price Left Unexplained
The price sits above the category average, but nothing in the ad explained why. A catalogue photo did not show the cocoa ratio, the filling or the quality of the box, so users found the price high and left. Click-through rate sat at 1,1%.
4-phase structure
We tied production and delivery to a single calendar: first we built the creative base, then we distributed budget across gifting periods, we switched retargeting on, and finally we measured each period and carried the result into the next.
Product and Box Photography
We produced macro detail, box-opening and gift-wrap images for every product. Cocoa ratio, filling and packaging quality became readable inside the creative, so the premium price had something visual behind it.
Budget by Gifting Calendar
We opened separate campaigns for Valentine's Day, Mother's Day and New Year. Each period started with ten days of warm-up on interest-based audiences, then the budget moved to the sales campaign for the final five days.
Location Filter and Retargeting
We removed provinces without dispatch from the campaign locations. Site visitors and cart abandoners were shown dynamic product ads; this layer took a fifth of total spend and produced a third of revenue.
End-of-Period Measurement and Carry-Over
At the close of every gifting period we matched ad spend against the site's order revenue, basing the measurement on orders that reached the store rather than on the ad panel's estimate. We recorded which creative and which audience produced the orders, then carried that into the next period's setup.
What we achieved together
Over six months the advertising investment came back at a ROAS of 5.2x. 2.0M impressions produced 52,000 clicks, click-through rate reached 2.6% and cost per click came down to €0.018. The period closed with 298 orders.
Impressions
2,0M
6-month period
CTR Increase
+134%
Cost per Click
€0.018
ROAS
5,2x
revenue ÷ spend
Campaign Breakdown
- Gifting-period campaigns used 62% of total spend.
- The retargeting layer alone produced a third of revenue.
- 24 new creatives went live across the three periods.
- Provinces with dispatch suspended were removed from campaign locations.
What We Learned
- Targeting the gift buyer converted more cheaply than targeting chocolate lovers.
- Concentrating budget on the season produced more revenue than spreading it monthly.
- Creatives showing product detail doubled the click-through rate.
- Reflecting the shipping limit in campaign locations removed wasted clicks.
For a premium-priced product, advertising works when it shows the moment of giving rather than the product alone; the calendar has to follow the dates of those moments.