Brands and storytelling:
Tony’s Chocolonely
About
Storytelling is vital in building a strong brand. In the Netherlands, a a group of committed individuals with strong beliefs built the biggest Dutch chocolate brand through storytelling. The film narrates how Tony’s Chocolonely aims to end the widespread use of slavery in the chocolate industry, using fun, colors and activism.
The film is part of the course «Startup Essentials» aimed at startup businesses at Norway’s Kristiania University College.
Specifications
Director Biography
Petter Skafle Henriksen is a multimedia producer at Kristiania University College’s center for learning technology. He has a long-standing background in the film and television industry, and has worked with advertising, feature films and television dramas.
Pedagogical value
A key requirement in teaching business subjects is to create the opportunity for students to connect theory to practice. We ask students to imagine what a business manager would do when confronted by a problem or a dilemma. This is the basis of the widely used case-based teaching method.
However, this is a challenge at the undergraduate level, but also at Master level. Specifically, many business cases are long and detailed and require students to have read them in advance to create a productive environment for discussion. They are often reluctant to do so. We have tackled this
problem by moving to short, filmed cases, which can be viewed, discussed between students and debated.
Read more
The film we produced about the campaigning Dutch chocolate brand, Tony’s Chocolonely is designed
to engage students by showing how a group of committed individuals with strong beliefs built the
biggest chocolate brand in the Netherlands through storytelling. The film narrates how Tony’s
Chocolonely aims to end the widespread use of slavery in the chocolate industry.
The film features interviews with Chocolonely managers that are informal and conversational – the
opposite of corporate – intercut with material provided by the company that is designed to
contextualise the interviews. This style makes the business world seem closer to the world of the
students.
The film has been widely seen. It is used as a case on three undergraduate courses at Høyskolen
Kristiania in Oslo: Intercultural Communications and Leadership, Co-creation and International
Business Communication, and one Master course, Sustainability and Innovation. It is also used on
three courses at ESADE Business School in Barcelona: Building Conscientious Brands (CEMS and
MBA), Ethical Marketing (Master in Marketing) and one Executive Master course at Rotterdam
School of Management.
The diversity of courses that the film has been used on demonstrates that while the film has a core
message about brand purpose and storytelling, it is also sufficiently flexible to be deconstructed and
debated within different frameworks.
Kristiania University College has its own department of educational technology. Four video
producers, all with various backgrounds within the TV and tech industry, produce about 800 videos
pr year for the school’s online and campus based courses. We produce video lectures, interviews,
case studies on location, instructional films, animation and simulations. The producers also advice
lectures on how to choose the right format to suit the purpose. The film about Tony’s Chocolonely is
one of these productions, recorded just in time before the pandemic hit in 2020
Info
Screenings
Read about the other selected films
What are plastics?
While making an online course about reducing plastic waste, Jostein realizes he doesn’t quite know what plastic really is. He embarks on a quest to the university to find out.
Incognito mode
This animation addresses the need for education to address easily accessible internet pornography, especially as it impacts young people’s lives.
Ocean Portrait – The children by the North Sea
This documentary is about a research and art project carried out in kindergartens in Øygarden municipality in 2022, near Bergen. In a joint project, we staged joint exploration of life in the biotope between land and sea with the aim of an aesthetic look at the sea and a local mindset and value set.
Hansine Hansens veg 18, 9019 Tromsø
