Rolo Revives Classic Advertising Campaign to Celebrate 75th Anniversary

Cam­paign shows how tru­ly cus­tomer-cen­tric mar­ket­ing stays time­less.

Pat Hong By Pat Hong from Linkdex. Join the discussion » 0 comments

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.

rolo-copy

(‘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.

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.

Pat Hong

Written by Pat Hong

Editor at Linkdex/Inked, Linkdex

Pat covers the SEO industry, digital marketing trends, and anything and everything around Linkdex. He also authors Linkdex's data analysis and reports, analysing the state of search in various industries.

Inked is published by Linkdex, the SEO platform of choice for professional marketers.

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