Stories Worth Sharing

Stories Worth Sharing is a spec OOH campaign developed in response to a brief to expand SOMA’s presence beyond Toronto and introduce the brand to a wider Canadian audience. Rather than simply advertising nationally, I wanted the media placement itself to embody that ambition. Major Canadian airports became the natural setting—physically putting SOMA in motion and introducing the Toronto-made brand to national and international travellers moving between cities, cultures, and destinations.

The concept builds on a connection already inherent to the product. SOMA crafts its chocolate in Toronto using cacao sourced from regions around the world, making origin, place, and discovery part of the experience. I developed the campaign copy around that relationship between where the chocolate comes from and where it is crafted, creating the line “Crafted in Toronto. A story worth sharing.” Supporting copy was adapted from origin information on SOMA’s website and shaped into concise descriptions of each region. Within an airport, references to rivers, rice paddies, landscapes, and local geography begin to read almost like travel notes, allowing the environment to give the product story a second meaning.

The art direction intentionally builds from SOMA’s existing packaging rather than creating a separate visual language for the campaign. Each bar’s artwork becomes the hero of its poster, enlarged and treated almost like a destination advertisement. The illustrations, typography, colour, and origin details already evoke a sense of art, culture, and place, so the layouts remain restrained and give those elements room to lead. Using the actual packaging artwork also creates a direct visual bridge from advertising to purchase—helping someone who notices a bar in the airport recognize and find that same product later on shelf.

Travel and gifting complete the idea. People return from trips with things they have discovered, bring gifts home for others, and share stories about where those objects came from. Chocolate enthusiasts engage with chocolate in a similar way, exchanging knowledge about cacao origins, makers, flavour, and provenance. Stories Worth Sharing brings those behaviours together, using travel not only to extend SOMA’s geographic reach, but to position each bar as something worth discovering, remembering, bringing home, and passing on.