On the one hand, the Santa Claus Exchange Machine was a classic promotional stunt because it involved giving out free products. On the other, it was a highly unusual promotion, because people first had to give something in return: their beloved chocolate Santa. Consumers had to actively engage with our brand before they got their reward. Either they saw our announcement on Facebook and took a chocolate Santa with them, or they bought one especially at the train station just to be able to put it into the machine two minutes later. So it is fair to say that this was a promotional stunt that didn’t quite tick the boxes of a traditional one.

Germans love their chocolate Santas and would be loath to just give them away. There are just too many memories and emotions tied to this hollow chocolate product, because everyone would have traditionally received one on December 6th as a child. This is why it was necessary to appeal to peoples' curiosity and sense of playfulness. With the Santa Claus Exchange Machine we took the test: Would anyone sacrifice their Santa to get RITTER SPORT chocolate? What do they love more? And the results are pretty obvious. Sorry, Santa Claus.

Over 1090 chocolate Santas were exchanged in a single day. The video got over 200,000 views on YouTube. RITTER SPORT gained more than 12,000 fans on Facebook in the following week. Tweets reached more than 526,500 followers. Overall the promotion resulted in 8.5 million media impressions. All in all, this makes the Santa Claus Exchange Machine by far the most successful promotion RITTER SPORT has ever done. And looking at the Facebook comments of people begging us to bring the machine to their city next year, the story will probably go on.