by Katherine Ishii IBL15B

What is the first thing that comes to your mind when you hear the word chocolate?

Sweet, happy, and a lot would have been my assumption. But the lady who is giving us a presentation, making sure that the moment we leave the facility the only association related to the chocolate we have, is Fazer from now on. That was exactly the trick we were discussing in our marketing class the other day, now I’ve seen how it has been used in practice. Owning the word- that is an amazing attempt from the brand manager. Didn’t work on me much. I find another chocolate brand tastier. Getting few lollipops and moving forward to see the factory.

No chocolate waterfalls for you, but you can have some bread instead.
We were not allowed to the factory side, instead, they could offer us to walk down the corridor and look at the exhibits of cocoa trees and to take a picture of a statue of a milk cow. It was pretty interesting to hear how much milk they are using daily, only to produce one type of chocolate, and did you knew that the white chocolate is made from cocoa butter?

There is a little shop, right in the middle of that ten-meter corridor, selling yoghurt, bread, and buns, in case someone gets hungry between finishing their lollipops and reaching the free chocolate goal point.

Here is the trick.
We are almost there, and the tension is rising. Soon we will reach the point where you can enjoy as much chocolate as you can, says the nice blond lady. Oh and one more thing…You will have approximately fifteen minutes here, you are not allowed to take anything with you and you can have no water, she adds.

The trick is that it is impossible to eat as much chocolate as you want without water. At all! Give me a cup of tea and I can personally finish few bars within half an hour. In there I could barely swallow my 5th tiny candy, not to mention, that the big bars were locked behind the glass. Instead of visiting “Wonka” chocolate factory, I felt like I have been tricked. The little fat kid inside me was raging and demanding justice.

First, things after we were taken to the room with water and had time to wander around the shop. Not that any of us wanted sweets anymore.

Sweets for the road.
The gift bags full of cookies, candies and bread were waiting for us on the way out. That was a very nice way to finish our trip to the Fazer chocolate factory. A bit disappointed, but still full and happy we all agreed, that visiting Fazer was definitely a good idea.