01. First Dish: The 2022 TVC & Brand Repositioning
The Challenge
tonies was still pretty unknown in the UK. Parents who stumbled across it would often look at it, tilt their head and think – what even is this? The TVC needed to answer that question fast, show the breadth of what the Toniebox could do across a family's day, speak to the kid using it and the parent desperately needing five minutes of peace. Two audiences, one film, only 30secs.
The Thinking
The product had real magic. It just needed to show up in real life – chaotic mornings, restless bedtimes, the in-between moments where a screen would normally win. We needed it to feel warm and joyful without being one of those ads. You know the ones. We used a well-known children's song that families already had a relationship with – something instantly familiar that made the whole thing land faster and stick longer. The child using it independently. The parent getting a moment. Both, in one film.
The Result: Came 5th in the UK public's most-liked TV ads that month. It set the tone for everything that followed.
02. The ingredients needed refining
The Challenge
The German founders had built a solid visual foundation back in 2013. Good ingredients. But no recipe. No TOV. No design guidelines worth following. Just a brand hub with some core pillars that left every designer free to throw together their own dish. The result? Inconsistency. A brand that looked and sounded different depending on who was in the kitchen that week.
The Thinking
This wasn't about making tonies grow up or lose its soul. The founders built this with a child's wonder and a parent's instinct and that had to stay. Think Innocent smoothies. Playful, characterful, talking to parents like a friend not a marketer. We needed to define it properly and make sure anyone cooking in the kitchen, any market, any agency, was working from the same recipe book. I partnered with the Head of Brand to build a rigorous briefing process, develop a full TOV and create design guidelines with enough detail to actually be useful.
The Before – designers throwing together their own dishes and no copywriters in sight
The After – Creative Kitchen set up, recipes defined (but constantly testing and iterating)
The Result
An elevated brandbook adopted by other markets and a tone of voice loved by parents
UK installed base grew to 1M+ Tonieboxes
Germany adapted our Amazon PDP and premium A+ structure
The Little Experts video won a “toniehaft” award voted by global marketing teams as the most on-brand creative
2022 Black Friday creative adopted by EU markets and used two years in a row
03. Prove it's worth it
The Challenge
Research kept throwing up the same finding. Prospective customers assumed the Toniebox cost around £30. A glorified speaker. Nice but not necessary. That gap between assumption and reality was quietly killing conversions.
The Thinking
Don't tell people it's worth it. Show them their life with it. We positioned the Toniebox as something families reach for from breakfast til bedtime, for years. Not a splurge. An investment that earns its place every single day, not only how much they use it, but how much joy it brings kids when they place that Tonie on the Toniebox.
The Result
Premium assets that shifted perception and drove conversion
Photography and video adopted by international markets
Major improvement in conversion rate on
04. Today with Tonies Podcast Tonie launch
The Challenge
Listening hours dropped significantly among school-age children — the Toniebox was primarily a bedtime product. We needed to expand use cases, increase daily listening and keep older kids in the tonieverse for longer.
The Thinking
Position Today with Tonies as a breakfast listening experience. Give kids a fun, educational boost to start their day and give parents 10 minutes to get through the morning chaos.
Single-minded proposition: Fuel curious, fun-seeking minds every morning.
The Result
+14% increase in playtime
6× less likely to become inactive in the first six months
21% more Tonies bought by podcast owners
76% of inactive listeners reactivated after getting the podcast
05. Pocket Tonies: There's a Tonie for That
The Challenge
Kids like what they like. Enthusiastically. And often... fleetingly. Parents are figuring out how to cultivate and support their interests without spending too much money. We wanted to position Pocket Tonies as a collectable format for older kids, keeping them in the tonieverse for longer.
The Thinking
There’s a Tonie for that. Positioning kids’ questions and interests in a positive light. Help kids become the best of themselves by championing their wild and wonderful interests. The answer is a Pocket Tonie.
The Result
Launch creative so successful it was adopted by the US market and formed the basis of global toolkits going forward.
06. Christmas 2023: Made by Hand, on Purpose
The Challenge
Black Friday is the biggest sales moment of the year for tonies. By Christmas, the job changes completely. Acquisition takes a back seat. This is the moment to show up for the families who already love the brand, to deepen that relationship and remind them why they chose tonies in the first place. Christmas is the biggest brand love building moment of the year. And brand love is worth protecting.
The Thinking
Christmas needed to feel like Christmas. Not a campaign. We created hand-crafted paper worlds – tactile, warm, imaginative – the kind of thing a child would want to climb inside and a parent would stop scrolling for. There's something about paper and craft that triggers a specific feeling. It's the same feeling as wrapping presents at midnight, or a child's drawing stuck to the fridge. It's not polished. It's real. And for a brand whose entire soul is about imagination, wonder and the joy of listening, it felt exactly right.
The Result
Hand-crafted assets that connected emotionally with existing tonies families at the most important brand moment of the year
Strengthened brand love beyond the transactional Black Friday period
Creative that felt unmistakably tonies – warm, joyful and made with care
Building Systems That Scale
Good creative isn't just what you make. It's how fast you can make it, how consistently, and how easily others can follow.
What we built:
A scalable CRM and email design system that delivered a +448% increase in email-driven revenue and reduced production time by up to 75%
PDP workflows that reduced production time by 83% per SKU across an average of 100 SKUs per market per year
An elevated brandbook adopted across international markets
Creative briefs grew from 174 in 2022 to an estimated 566 in 2025
Individual assets grew from 562 in 2022 to an estimated 11,000 in 2025