case study:
World’s finest chocolate
World’s Finest Chocolate is one of America’s most recognized fundraising brands, helping schools, teams and youth programs raise money for decades through its iconic chocolate bar program.
When NoLie took over the account in October 2025, the brand had exceptional unaided awareness but an under-leveraged digital ecosystem — fragmented tracking, an inconsistent martech stack, and marketing that was hard to measure or scale. The ask: align data, creative and operations into one scalable, measurable, tech-enabled marketing framework that drives fundraiser sign-ups across school communities nationwide.
NoLie operated as a full-stack extension of the World’s Finest Chocolate team — leading strategy, media, data, AI, web and creator marketing in close partnership with the client’s internal team and co-agency partners.
the brief
The Brand
A heritage fundraising brand built on trust, community and proven results. World’s Finest Chocolate fundraisers are affordable, accessible and designed so every family can take part — with up to 50% profit, dedicated rep support, and most programs wrapping in just three weeks. The opportunity was to modernize how that story reaches three core audiences: Fundraising Leads, School Officials, and Parents.
TEN Months, One Compounding System
Full service, one team
We combined World’s Finest Chocolate’s own research and knowledge with our audit to build a messaging matrix across the brand’s core themes. Disciplined testing revealed the strongest messages by audience and funnel stage — then we developed content against the winners: agile creative iteration first, then credibility and scale through influencer collaborations. (Specific messaging withheld to protect client learnings.)
Strategic pillars translated into scroll-stopping creative — tailored by audience, format and funnel stage, then put to work across paid social, search, display and web.
Creative built to sell the story
Naming World’s finest chocolate’s Innovation App
Alongside the media engine, NoLie led naming and logo development for World’s Finest Chocolate’s new fundraising app — a distinctive identity that stands out and innovates while leaning into the brand’s heritage. A cross-functional team of strategy and creative direction worked with AI acceleration for research, generation and evaluation.
Benchmarks: Simple & Clear · Brand Fit · Distinctiveness & Memorability
Strategic Territories
We mapped naming directions across two tensions — Heritage ↔ Modern and Functional / Utility ↔ Emotional / Motivational — to explore the whole territory before converging.
Unbiased, Criteria-Based Scoring — Accelerated by AI
We leveraged AI to support our human first creative process, using it to research, amplify, test creative angles and objectively score candidates against weighted criteria — removing bias and pressure-testing every name against the brief.
Efficiency That Compounded Over the Engagement
This is the story of one full school year. From our September starting point through June, NoLie turned a static, reach-poor media setup into a scalable, efficient growth engine.
Monthly Reach Growth vs. October Baseline (%)
Cost Per 1,000 Impressions (CPM)
Budget by Funnel Stage
Sources: Salesforce + platform data. October baseline vs. May 2026 — full-engagement change, not a single month.