Toblerone’s post-Matterhorn look is a test of brand assets

Triangular chocolate brand Toblerone is dropping the Matterhorn mountain from its logo to comply with Swiss law, and switching to a “streamlined mountain logo” – but will it matter?

What’s happened

Matterhorn has been on the Toblerone packaging since 1970, and the Mondelez-owned company has manufactured the chocolate in the Swiss city of Bern since its founding in 1908.

Now, under Swiss law, the brand can no longer use one of the country’s national symbols as it has moved more of its production operation outside of Switzerland and to the Slovakian capital, Bratislava, the Wall Street Journal reports. It will also remove other references to Switzerland.

Distinctive assets

Distinctive brand assets are vital tools for a business. System One research suggests that what they call ‘Fluent Devices’ are 23% more likely to achieve market share gain and also profit gain. But the question here is whether losing a small part of the Toblerone equation – admittedly the inspiration behind the triangle shape – will negatively affect the business.

The answer, ultimately, is probably not. Many (non-Swiss) people won’t know that the mountain in question was the famous Matterhorn and are therefore unlikely to notice. If it were instead to ditch the triangle, that would be another question altogether.

Points of view

• What really matters is consistency and the repetition of a collection of assets that eventually deliver uniqueness and fame, as strategist Nick Liddell explains in an in-depth exploration of asset strategy for WARC.
• In Marketing Week, Mark Ritson writes that for such a mature brand, it’s the mix that matters: “Most smart organisations deliberately merge their symbolic and actual provenance in such a manner that they become entirely indivisible”.
• Arguably, a bigger risk is when brands attempt to modernise in such a way as to diminish that confluence of symbols to the point of de-branding, as Cathal Gillen, a strategist at Distinctive BAT, has noted: “Be careful of design trends and copying what competitors and other brands are doing because it’s on trend.”

Sourced from the WSJ, WARC, Marketing Week