Ombar

Agency: The Collaborators
Director: Alex Ririe
Creative Director: Mary Lewis
Designer: Annabelle Bradford
Illustrator: Ben Wills
Web Build: Rob Dove
Location: United Kingdom
Project Type: Produced
Client: Ombar
Product Launch Location: Global
Packaging Contents: Chocolate

The Collaborators have created a new brand world to help Ombar reach a wider audience with its mission to change the way people see chocolate. The Bristol-based agency was appointed to create a dynamic visual language and relaunch the brand’s website.

From its kitchen table beginnings in 2007, Ombar has grown to become the number one chocolate in Wholefoods, beloved by ethical consumers for its luxurious taste, sustainability and health credentials. Although these values have been at the heart of the brand since its inception, they had also started to permeate the mainstream. Ombar needed to reassert its credentials and bring its story to life.

Working with the idea of ‘super cacao with super powers’ and the design of the existing packaging, The Collaborators developed a concept that accentuated each of Ombar’s amazing benefits. It took the fun, retro vibe of Ecuadorian street art (the source of its cacao) and mixed it with the cool modular aesthetic of classic graphic novels.

This vibrant new look, matched by a playful tone of voice was implemented in painstaking detail across a new mobile-optimsed website. The brand world has also rolled out across other brand touch points including comms and social media. All illustrations were drawn in-house.

Director at The Collaborators, Alex Ririe said, “The premium chocolate category is incredibly dynamic with new entrants and existing brands upping the stakes in terms of sustainability, ethics and wellbeing. It’s great that these are becoming hygiene factors but it means that for a brand like Ombar, which was founded on these principles, it has to find a new way to remind consumers what it’s about and make a compelling case for itself.”

Creative Director, Mary Lewis continues, “Ombar looks premium and has authenticity in spades. It also tastes incredible, so we wanted to inject some personality and joy into the brand world too. Our concept has Ombar’s cacao as the hero of the piece. It’s a true super food and fundamental to great chocolate but is often overlooked and commoditised.”

Ombar’s website and brand world launched this autumn and continues to roll-out.