Nutella

Company: The Ferrero Group

Brand value: US$2,840 million

Headquarter city: Luxembourg

Category: Food & Dairy

Year formed: 1964

Nutella started as a clever solution to a shortage of cocoa and has come to represent an entire food category on its own. The premium hazelnut and chocolate spread has its origins in a sweet paste made by patissier Pietro Ferrero in 1946. He mixed hazelnuts, sugar and just a little cocoa, which was difficult to obtain after World War Two. The paste could be sliced to be served on bread; a softer, spreadable version was launched in 1954 as SuperCrema. The Nutella name and the distinctive wide Nutella jar were born in the mid-1960s. Nutella is now sold in supermarkets all over the world, and Ferrero says that you could circle the world 1.8 times with the jars of Nutella sold in one year. In May 2107, the world’s first Nutella Café opened in Chicago, serving a range of Nutella-based dishes, and since 2007, February 5 has been celebrated by Nutella lovers around the globe as World Nutella Day. The event was started by an Italian-American blogger and took off. The brand made it into the Guinness Book of Records in 2017 when 27,854 people gathered in the German city of Gelserkirchen for the largest ever continental breakfast with Nutella. Nutella advertising, primarily via television and online, focuses on the emotional connections people have with the product. In recent years, the packaging itself has become a brand-building tool, with consumers able to personalize the labels on their own jars of Nutella via an online customization platform. Nutella remains under Ferrero family ownership.