Can a chocolate teach you how to LOVE better?

It’s my break at work so I mindlessly scroll through Instagram looking for entertainment. The most annoying thing are those sponsored advertisements disrupting my feed. They’re even worse when they’re disguised as a post I think my friends posted so I begin engaging with it before realizing it’s an ad. However, an Instagram sponsored ad really caught my eye this week and I actually watched the full 1 minute video which is something I rarely do.

The video was for a brand called the “One Love Foundation” and their Instagram handle is “join1love.” They speak about love on their website (joinonelove.org) as a skill that people can work on. The sponsored video begins with testimonies of survivors who were abused in different types of relationships (gay and straight, old and young) with the shocking fact that 1 in 4 people will experience an abusive relationship in their lifetime. They all spoke of the “why” which comes from learning the signs of an unhealthy relationship. To combat this alarming statistic, this brand teaches the signs of healthy and unhealthy relationships through something more tangible: the tastes of different chocolates.

I am passionate about raising awareness to fight domestic violence stemming from its occurrence in my extended family, as well as being a member of LMU Belles. Therefore, I was very engaged with this ad from the beginning. It impacted me by giving me a new perspective of how to raise awareness about this issue. I LOVE the idea of teaching this sometimes-difficult- to-discuss topic in a tangible way. Plus, everyone loves chocolate so this can reach so many people who need to hear this. Their target audience is very broad. They do a great job by showing that it can happen to anyone through the different testimonies. The target market extends to those not in relationships by applying these same ideas to toxic friendships, or being able to identify red flags in a friend’s relationship.

The video included some of the chocolates in the box, but I wanted to learn more how chocolate could teach this difficult topic. I continued to interact with their brand by stalking their Instagram and pushing the follow button (hoping to engage with this brand more in the future), but found much more information on their website. The taste of jealousy comes in a heart shape milk and vanilla chocolate shape. However, in the center is the acidic orange taste. The isolation chocolate has a sweet pastille in the middle, but is fully enclosed by a bitter, “ultra-dark” chocolate shell. Each chocolate has a description of why the chocolate is that emotion/tendency, then a blurb relating to its healthiness or unhealthiness in a relationship. So cool!

Before this, I had never heard of this brand, so my perceptions were not changed. Overall, I now have a very positive perception of the One Love Foundation. I learned that meaningful marketing does work and captures attention, as well as showing what they are personally doing as a brand to make a difference. I also learned as a creative that sometimes it is easier to break harder, abstract ideas into something simple and go from there. This ad is the epitome of what we are describing at “the era of meaning.” The product of the chocolate box is completely based in meaning, and they use meaningful marketing to raise awareness about their brand. It was a successful advertisement bringing in many new followers (like me) to their current 26.3K, while making a difference in people’s lives. The chocolate box is also a wonderful way to teach children these abstract feelings and the One Love Foundation can expand into younger markets that way.

Their website! https://www.joinonelove.org/

The longer version of the video from Instagram: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IwsfYT0-09k