Big heists often capture the public imagination. Pastry company Vachon knows this first hand: in 2005, one of its trucks was stolen while the driver made a stop at a convenience store. Before being arrested, the thief led police on a chase, dropping snack cakes from the truck’s open back door to divert them.

In a campaign promoting the new Ah Louis and Passion Caramel snack cakes, Vachon and longtime AOR Cossette have been having fun with the idea of a more well-planed snack heist.

Online videos show bandits robbing a warehouse in grainy, CCTV footage. To keep up engagement with the “developing story,” the agency also created Vachon’s very first TikTok account, called Vachonneries, where a self-proclaimed Vachon fan followed developments in the case, provided updates to followers and attempted to find info about the thief himself. Things culminated with a news-style video reporting the stolen truck being located – on the roof of a building in Montreal.

“Vachon is a beloved brand that stands out from the crowd and allows us to engage with our fans in an unusual way,” says Maryna Shcherbyna, senior marketing manager at Vachon. “We have a lot of flexibility in terms of pushing the limits, and creative angles we can take,” Shcherbyna says.

Vachon is celebrating its 100th anniversary this year, and it has to connect with younger consumers, as its core customer is typically older, Shcherbyna notes. Therefore, something edgy and highly engaging was required to drive trial.

The video has thus far generated a record engagement rate for the brand, with 485,000 views and 230,000 interactions globally. The new products at the centre of the “heist” are fusions between Ah Caramel! and Jos Louis (Ah Louis) and Ah Caramel! and Passion Flakie (Passion Caramel!), the result of a wildly successful poll and campaign from 2020. In the poll, 50,000 consumers took part choosing their favorite pairings from among 11 Vachon offerings, with the top two vote getters selected for a product innovation.

Reactions from consumers has been so positive, Shcherbyna says, that it plans to use the platform for future campaigns as well.

She tells strategy that, in a challenging and high inflation environment, the brand’s marketing dollars originally allocated for last year were carried over. “It was a decent amount of money,” she says about the ad spend, but it is more targeted. According to Shcherbyna, it’s an art to find a balance between going national, and going after its core in Quebec, where it is extremely popular.

The  production house for this campaign is Roméo & Fils  and the media agency is Starcom.