Insight Out: nucao CMO Christian Fenner on Boldness & Rebranding

Marketing’s boldest voices: Christian Fenner on bold ideas and clear KPIs at nucao

If you want to make an impact today, you need courage, consistency and a focus on data. Christian Fenner, co-founder and CMO of sustainable chocolate brand nucao, reveals how to bring these ingredients together in the FMCG sector as part of our “Insight Out: Marketing’s Boldest Voices” series.

About Christian Fenner

Christian Fenner is co-founder and CMO of nucao – Germany’s chocolate challenger brand. Driven by tremendous passion and a clear vision, he and his team are shaking up the industry by prioritizing sustainability: Organic, vegan and fair-trade are non-negotiable standards for the future of chocolate as far as Fenner is concerned. Backed by this conviction, he has developed nucao into a chocolate-aisle love brand, which now wins over customers with innovative varieties, does pioneering work in sustainable cocoa cultivation and uses only environmentally friendly paper packaging. Right after studying for a degree in industrial engineering and business management at RWTH Aachen University, Germany, Fenner and two fellow graduates took the plunge and founded nucao in 2016. Inspired by trips through the rainforests of Brazil and Peru, Fenner decided to devote his entrepreneurial endeavors to tackling climate change and promoting sustainable business practices. Guided more by gut instinct than marketing manuals, he has developed a passion for authentic communication and strong brand building. His goal is to fundamentally transform every step of the chocolate industry value chain – from cocoa cultivation to supermarket shelves. With provocative campaigns and clear principles, Fenner and nucao are proving that radical sustainability and economic success can go hand in hand. He believes that making a real and lasting impact calls for the courage to change, an uncompromising attitude and, of course, exceptional chocolate.

What’s been your boldest marketing move so far – and why would(n’t) you do it again?

In 2021, we published an open letter to the big chocolate corporations and the Minister of Food as a full-page ad in German news magazine Der Spiegel, supported by an out-of-home advertising campaign. I’d make that marketing move again because, back then – before Fridays for Future and so on – it said what nobody was saying, without any sugarcoating, and made people sit up and take notice. At the same time, it put us on the map as a challenger brand and brought nucao to the attention of the urban, eco-conscious target group. The accompanying video alone generated 800,000 organic views and more than doubled our follower base.

When was the last time you stepped outside your marketing comfort zone – and why was that necessary?

That would’ve been in 2023, when we completely relaunched the nucao brand and scrapped our umbrella brand – the nu company – and the sub-brands numove and nuseed, totally changing the brand’s visual identity. At that time, we had grown from being a functional chocolate bar to a functional snack brand with sub-brands and so on. Because we’d taken the strategic decision to shift to a chocolate-only brand with a broader audience appeal in terms of flavor, we also needed a visual brand that embodied not only boldness, but also fun and pleasure.

Imagine you had to start your marketing campaign from scratch tomorrow – with an unlimited budget: What’s the first thing you would do differently?

Internally, I would continue to prioritize creativity over media budget and try not to be distracted by promises of unlimited reach. Then I would give guerrilla marketing ideas and bold moves a big boost with a decent media budget in the hope of significantly increasing the probability of going viral organically. And I would fire up the awareness amplifiers – TV, OOH, social media – as doing that always correlates directly with higher sales for FMCG brands. At the same time, however, I would focus primarily on strengthening the POS with more product samples and better shelf presence.

How can you tell whether marketing transformation is really making a difference?

The way people are engaging on social media (length of comments, number of shares) as well as the impact and traffic at events compared with other brands. Ultimately, of course, increasing rotation in the market. Another sign is the continuous flow of PR and social media clips. And awareness both in the industry and beyond of themes that are important to us as a brand: purpose, a forward-looking approach, boldness. When people make reference to the nucao brand, even in other sectors, I know that we’re having more of an impact than “just” shaking up the chocolate industry.

A purpose-driven attitude that sells: the nucao blueprint

Calling conventions into question, anticipating headwinds and staying focused – nucao shows how clear values can be translated into disciplined brand management. An open letter and rebranding have served as the building blocks of a systematic approach: idea first, media as an amplifier, proof at the point of sale through product samples, presence and rotation. And that’s nucao’s recipe for combining a delicious snack with sustainability to achieve cultural relevance and measurable performance.