The most iconic of Swiss mountains, the Matterhorn, is slowly disappearing from Toblerone packaging to meet Swiss naming requirements, the owner of the prism-shaped nougat chocolate bar said.
Created in 1908 in the Tobler family factory, Toblerone has so far only been produced in Bern, the capital of the Alpine nation. But starting in the fall, the famous chocolate bar will also be produced in Bratislava, Slovakia, “to meet increasing global demand,” a spokeswoman for US food giant Mondelez International said.
This partial relocation forces the brand to remove the “from Switzerland” that was enthroned just below the brand on the packaging to meet the requirements of the “Swissness” legislation adopted in 2017 to protect Swiss-made products, it had already revealed. Mondelez last June. year. But the Matterhorn is also replaced by a stylized and generic mountain, which has not failed to spark debate in Switzerland.
a matter of pride
The new design, which nevertheless maintains the silhouette of the bear symbol of Bern inscribed on the mountainside, began to be implemented in the autumn of last year. Toblerone produces seven billion of its famous chocolate bars a year, 97% of which are exported to 120 countries. The name is a pun on Tobler and “torrone”, the Italian name for honey almond nougat.
Is this commercial suicide? the newspaper wondered Geneva grandstand. No, answers Michael Kamm, head of the Trio communication agency, in the newspaper. For him, the brand is “very consolidated beyond its logo”.
Olivier Furrer, professor of marketing at the University of Freiburg, judges that it is a problem in Switzerland:
Source: BFM TV
