30 years after the fall of the communist regime, corruption scandals involving politicians are still periodically dominating the headlines in Romania. These scandals have shaken Romanians’ trust in the entire political class, leading to a harmful consequence: people became indifferent. That’s why, before the 2019 elections, voter turnout predictions were at an all-time low. But ROM, the traditional chocolate wrapped in the national flag since 1964, with a long-standing tradition of activating Romanian’s patriotism with campaigns like The American Rom, Romanians are Smart and Bucharest not Budapest, knew that in order to change something, people must exercise their civic right and get voting. If they thought they had no one to vote for, we gave them someone to vote against. So we set an objective to strengthen our brand’s positioning and increase sales, while doing something meaningful for the nation – activate people’s patriotism and get people voting.

Two months before the 2019 presidential elections in Romania, a new, independent candidate by the name of Toma Corunt started making headlines with his outrageous electoral platform. From proposing to cut down virgin forests, to stopping highway constructions, to decrease education funding, this guy was infuriating even the most passive Romanian voter.

After two weeks of promoting this candidate, ROM revealed it was all a stunt meant to show people that if they don’t vote, someone like Toma Corunt could get elected. The second phase of the campaign was focused on encouraging people to get to the polls. In the reveal, ROM changed its iconic pack to VOT (Romanian for “VOTE”), therefore turning the chocolate into a reminder to take action. It also acted as a tool to convince the undecided ones to go the polls, because when scanned with the phone, it revealed new reasons why every vote counts.

With a 55 year history in Romania, ROM is the most traditional chocolate there is. However, it’s consumer isn’t getting younger. So ROM is in a battle against newer, international brands that are more popular with the younger audience. That’s why most brand building efforts are targeting genZ and millennials, who need to be connected to the brand in new ways.

Even if this generation is politically detached, they have a strong sense of justice and doing the right thing. So, in order to wake up their civic spirit, our provocation was meant to jolt them into action. Our fake candidate’s mission was to unite them against a common evil and connect them to today’s political realities. Our product, saying “VOT” instead of “ROM” throughout the duration of the revealing phase, became another reminder of the importance of voting, and a proof of interest for all those who bought it.

Two months before the 2019 presidential elections, we launched our unbranded fake candidate through a 360 campaign. We created his own Facebook page, videos promoted on social media and youtube, content around his electoral platform. Offline, his campaign mirrored a real one. A signature collecting tent was installed in Bucharest’s busiest square, next to the real candidates’ tents. We distributed T-shirts, pins and flyers with our candidate’s slogan: “I win, Romania wins”.

After weeks of intense promotion, right on the day were the lists with the final candidates went public, we revealed that it was all a hoax, meant to send people to the polls. After provoking them, now it was time to convince them to act: ROM changed the iconic packaging to from “VOT” (Romanian for “VOTE”) revealing new reasons to vote with every scan and turned their social media pages into media outlets reacting to voter turnout.

ROM’s campaign boosted social activism for young people in Romania during the most important event in Romania every five years.

Our ROM VOT special edition candy bar quickly sold out, leading to 12.1% in SKUs and +7.4% in sales vs +3% objective.

The campaign successfully rejuvenated our young target via massive reach on digital channels – with messaging reaching more than 55% of young Romanians. The demographic profile of Toma Corunt’s Facebook followers was skewed more heavily toward a younger audience than ROM’s traditional Facebook page, 35% to 27%, increasing ROM’s young followers on social media by 22%.

By campaign’s end, Toma Corunt’s social media page on Facebook had accrued more than 2MM organic video views.