05 Dec 2024 Little Chocolate Lies — how Lindt undermined its own claims of excellence

Claims of its luxury chocolates being ‘expertly crafted’ were mere puffery, the Swiss manufacturer insisted, in order to slither out of a legal matter. Where does this leave the schmucks (like you and me) who were naive enough to buy it?

It’s one of the mantras of the gourmand’s world: dark chocolate is best, and the darker the better. Not long ago, chocolate was chocolate. Only 30 years ago, milk chocolate ruled. You used “baking chocolate” in cooking. Then suddenly you had to choose between “70% cacao” and even “85% cacao”. Dark and bitter.

And who makes those? Lindt.

Modern recipes for chocolate tarts generally call for dark chocolate, whereas in decades gone by the “chocolate” component may not have been chocolate as we know it, but powdered cocoa. The same applies to desserts such as chocolate mousse.

But things are changing. Pendulums shift in both directions. And we might well ask ourselves in light of recent developments in the world of chocolate — is the pendulum swinging back? And should we help it a little?

Lindt is just better, right? More refined, more stylish, more… well, Swiss. Made, we must have presumed, with precision. Maybe even a touch of love. 

Or lovingly manufactured with a liberal sprinkling of lies?

Imagine a high-flying global chocolate brand’s own lawyers saying their marketing was mere puffery, just some stuff that they made up. 

And that is exactly what Lindt did. Yes, Lindt. Your 70% cacao brand. Your 85% cacao out-of-the-top drawer chocolate par excellence brand. The One. Bar None. Lindt. 

As the Lindt packaging boasts, the contents within that wrapper have been “expertly crafted with the finest ingredients”. (It said so on the packaging, it must be true, right?) The inference was that we should be happy to pay more for Lindt, because it was just better. 

And we believed it. Surely there was no finer chocolate, or certainly not at supermarket level. You’re happy to pay more than you would for Cadbury or Nestlé — because it’s Lindt. Right? Because of that packaging claim, which has been perpetuated and infiltrated into society.

Then, to slither out of a bit of a legal matter, Lindt owned up — it was a lie. Mere puffery. This being a useful gamble in court, because puffery cannot be proven as fact or otherwise. It’s a baseless, vague claim.

The chocolate maker’s own lawyers said its marketing tactics were “exaggerated advertising, blustering, and boasting upon which no reasonable buyer would rely”. This astonishing admission refers directly to those very words — and Lindt now admits that their prized chocolates are not in fact “expertly crafted with the finest ingredients”. ….

Daily Maverick: Read the full article here