Chocolate usually means a quiet night in: feet up, telly on, and sofa crumbs you’ll absolutely pretend you didn’t notice.

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But what if, halfway through a bite, a pair of fully-oiled, big-haired, 90s-era wrestlers burst into your living room and started suplexing each other over the future of the cocoa industry?

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That’s the starting bell for There’s Fight in Every Bite, Tony’s Chocolonely’s first-ever global TV campaign, and part of their biggest campaign to date. A joyful, chaotic, and slightly bonkers invitation for chocolate lovers everywhere to join the fight against exploitation in cocoa… one bar at a time.

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At the heart of the campaign is a 30-second TV spot airing across Sky channels from 9pm on 10th February. Two women. One sofa. One bar of Tony’s classic milk chocolate. As they take a bite, the room fills with the sounds of body slams, flying elbows and pure, theatrical chaos. Enter Tony’s Chocolonely versus X-Ploitation – a literal wrestling match between good chocolate and the dark realities of the cocoa industry, where poverty, child labour and deforestation still run rampant when farmers aren’t paid a living income.

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It ain’t exactly subtle… but memorable? Absolutely.

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We wanted to prove that purpose-led advertising doesn’t have to whisper earnestly or point solemnly at a graph. It can be loud, ridiculous and genuinely entertaining – while still landing a punch (ahem). Every Tony’s bar is delicious, yes. But it’s also doing battle with a broken system. And just like Tony’s bars, that’s a fight worth getting your teeth into.

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The campaign marks Tony’s first time stepping into the national TV ring, made possible through a partnership with Sky Media and the Sky Zero Footprint Fund. After we helped Tony’s to win the Champions category, we secured £500k worth of advertising to help bring their mission into living rooms across the UK. TV gave us the scale to turn a complex supply-chain issue into a shared cultural moment – one that doesn’t ask people to study, just to notice, enjoy, and maybe choose differently next time they’re in the chocolate aisle.

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Working with production partners Common People Studios and director Mary-Sue Masson, we leaned hard into the surreal. Wrestling tropes. Exaggeration. A touch of chaos. Because if you’re going to talk about exploitation, you might as well do it with a flying bodyslam. Tony’s also worked with System1 to test and optimise the creative and hope it will resonate with both existing fans and new audiences. 

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But this was never just about a TV ad. There’s Fight in Every Bite is a fully integrated, 360° campaign spanning TV, paid social, earned media, experiential, digital and PR. TV lights the fuse, but the fight continues well beyond the living room, with a special one-off exhibition grudge match between Tony and X-Ploitation in King's Cross station.

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Here's a few highlights: 

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Behind the madness sits something very real. Tony’s works with 100% traceable cocoa through Tony’s Open Chain, pays farmers higher long-term prices to support living incomes, actively identifies and remediates child labour, and ensures cocoa is deforestation-free. The mission is serious. The tone doesn’t have to be.

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For us, this campaign is what happens when brave clients back weird ideas with teeth. When entertainment and ethics stop being treated as opposites. And when you trust that people don’t need to be lectured to care – they just need a reason to look up.

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So yes, it’s chocolate. Yes, it’s wrestling. And yes, there really is fight in every bite. 

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With budgets tighter than a spandex leotard, we had to be pretty creative. We scripted our TVC to be shot in one day and one location. We hired professional wrestlers rather than actors to play Tony and X-Ploitation, so they could plan the choreography (and stress the hell out of our insurers). For the experiential exhibition match, we booked a proper wrestling referee to keep things the right side of unhinged, built and dressed a professional wrestling ring, scripted the fights, the jokes, the banter, arranged the sampling… we even had a special bin for free chocolate that said ‘hey, how’ve you bin?’ on it. We had the whole creative team making placards that said things like ‘Marry me Tony’ and ‘Ethics are hot’ on them.

Have you ever found yourself ironing a wrestler’s pants at 4am in King’s Cross? Yeah. We did that too. But we’d prefer not to talk about it. 

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How did it go? Well, it went bloody brilliantly, of course. (Otherwise why would we be telling you all about it?)

Let’s have a look:

Household penetration rose 1.1ppts – the brand’s steepest ever increase. The campaign reached over 6 million people, while our stunt at King’s Cross directly engaged over 16,500 people in just 8 hours. The online stream was the brand’s most-watched TikTok of the last year.

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And it was pretty memorable too: Tony’s saw a 19.4% increase in recall across TV and VOD, while unaided recall jumped from 9th in the total Chocolate category to 3rd. And Cubery named the TV ad one of Top 5 most effective in 2026 (even though all of the others outspent us by at least 400%).

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In the Sky’s important and premium ‘chocolate buyers’ audience, Tony’s saw a 21.4% increase of people believing Tony’s would be tasty – significantly above channel benchmarks. Among the same audience, Tony’s saw a 15.5% increase in people learning that Tony’s is sustainable. Smashed it. 

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Sales of Tony’s Milk Chocolate 180g bar increased 20% YOY in the 12 weeks since the campaign launched – its largest ever sales increase in a single quarter.

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There’s something about watching grown men in wigs and lycra chucking themselves around the place that should bring the gleeful inner child out in all of us. So we definitely had a laugh (whenever we could find time). And the client?

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Well, Nicola Matthews, UK&I Head of Marketing at Tony’s Chocolonely, said: “They’re the only people that could bring something this barmy to life and do it so seamlessly.”

Which we think is a sort of compliment. She was definitely smiling when she said it, anyway.

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