Rolo has revived their clas­sic slo­gan, “Do you love some­one enough to give them your last Rolo?” after drop­ping it “for good” in 2003. With a humor­ous twist to match chang­ing con­sumer sen­ti­ment, #las­tro­lo is a com­bi­na­tion of clas­sic copy­writ­ing, and mul­ti­chan­nel dig­i­tal mar­ket­ing that is breath­ing new life into the brand’s iden­ti­ty.

Do you love some­one enough to give them your last Rolo?

Some­times the best adver­tis­ing slo­gans can’t be bet­tered. Like Nike’s “Just Do It,” or Apple’s “Think Dif­fer­ent,” the finest slo­gans become much big­ger than the cam­paigns for which they were con­ceived. Time­less, per­ti­nent, unique — clas­sic slo­gans increase reach as well as cap­tur­ing the essence of a brand or prod­uct. Often it makes for a com­bi­na­tion so pow­er­ful it comes to define a brand’s very iden­ti­ty.

Choco­late has been the sub­ject of some of the finest copy­writ­ing of all time. ‘Have a break, have a KitKat”, “A Mars a day helps you work, rest and play”, or “The lighter way to enjoy choco­late” (chances are you won’t need me to tell you this is Mal­te­sers), every indi­vid­ual brand has it’s own proud his­to­ry of com­pelling words and catchy jin­gles, each designed to win con­sumers at mil­lions of indi­vid­ual moments of truth before any­one in dig­i­tal start­ed to use the phrase.

‘The last Rolo’ is one of the clas­sics. First coined in 1980, the roman­tic mes­sag­ing served the brand well for over 20 years before man­u­fac­tur­er Nestlé pulled the cam­paign on research sug­gest­ing British cou­ples now thought humor was a more impor­tant aspect of a rela­tion­ship than romance.

Here’s a lit­tle bite from the past to refresh your mem­o­ry of how the adver­tis­ing was ini­tial­ly rolled out:

Today, the choco­late brand has revived the con­cept, mod­ern­iz­ing the con­cept with a cru­cial injec­tion of humor, and unleash­ing it with the full pow­er of dig­i­tal mar­ket­ing.

Led by a series of new video adver­tise­ments, the refreshed con­cept is less sen­ti­men­tal, and good for a chuck­le.

Whether in the depths of out­er space, or the con­fines of the office, Rolo’s new cam­paign speaks to mod­ern audi­ences in a way all effec­tive adver­tis­ing should. Rel­e­vant, relat­able, and above all enter­tain­ing.

#lastrolo

When Rolo start­ed the cam­paign back in the ’80s, peo­ple were engaged. Lit­er­al­ly. Such is the pow­er and sim­plic­i­ty of the mes­sage, that peo­ple every­where were giv­ing away their last Rolos, in sym­bol­ic con­fes­sions of their love to crush­es, and as an engage­ment gift to future fiancés.

(‘Too roman­tic’, and not in a good way, research reveals.)

Timeless Messages

It makes for just the kind of brand engage­ment that mar­keters love to see, but in a pre-dig­i­tal world, there was no way to ampli­fy that lev­el of engage­ment or use it to fuel a wider cam­paign.

Today that’s all changed. Rolo’s new cam­paign sees the brand’s clas­sic slo­gan hit­ting social media por­tals like it nev­er left. It’s a great exam­ple of how a clas­sic cam­paign can be com­plete­ly reju­ve­nat­ed with the added reach of mod­ern dig­i­tal mar­ket­ing chan­nels.

Gone dud an Advert like. Take a peek-its pret­ty like. #Las­tRo­lo: http://t.co/HvwgOfBj7C
— John­William Rogers (@JohnWillRogers) Octo­ber 16, 2014

But not every­thing has changed. The cam­paign shows how cer­tain brand mes­sages are tru­ly time­less. With cam­paigns that both dis­tin­guish a brand’s iden­ti­ty and enable con­sumers to engage, true cus­tomer-cen­tric mar­ket­ing nev­er becomes dat­ed or obso­lete. It also shows how a brand’s iden­ti­ty can evolve and be reju­ve­nat­ed in a fresh cam­paign that serves chang­ing con­sumer sen­ti­ment of new and younger gen­er­a­tions.

Do you love the #las­tro­lo refresh? Tell us your favorite clas­sic slo­gans and cam­paigns in the com­ments.