Catch, Ireland's 40-year-old chocolate bar, relaunched in March 2019 via Bloom's Unofficial Catch Fan Club campaign, backed by a €500,000 budget across TV,
ARCHIVEHow Catch and Bloom Brought an Irish Chocolate Icon Back to Life
Catch is an Irish chocolate bar with more than 40 years of heritage that was relaunched in Ireland in March 2019 through a campaign created by Dublin agency Bloom, built around the fictional world of two friends running an unofficial fan club from a garden shed, and supported by a €500,000 investment across television, out-of-home, digital, social media, in-store activity, and point-of-sale displays, according to Shelflife Ie and Adworld Ie.
The campaign launched on 11 March 2019, according to Shelflife.ie, with trade coverage appearing on Adworld.ie by 19 March 2019. Its creative centrepiece was a concept Bloom called "The Unofficial Catch Fan Club," a character-driven universe populated by two warmly comic figures whose devotion to the brand served as the narrative engine for the entire campaign. The suite comprised six television and online spots, with three named executions documented publicly: "Jim's Personal Best," "Paudie's Big Interview," and "Paudie's Curious O'Clock," as recorded on Clapboard.com and Ads of the World. The first 20-second film in the series was titled "Weights," per Clapboard.com.
The strategic objective was direct and openly stated. In Ireland, Catch had suffered from what Marketing Ie described as "minimal marketing" in the years preceding the relaunch, allowing the brand to retain a loyal but ageing fanbase while failing to reach new audiences. The 2019 campaign was designed to reverse that trajectory, restoring Catch to major Irish chocolate brand status and introducing it to younger confectionery consumers across the Irish market. The campaign's character-based, narrative approach gave the brand a consistent creative identity across multiple formats and platforms, ensuring that each individual film could function as a standalone piece of entertainment while reinforcing the same fan club world across every touchpoint.
Catch originally launched in Ireland in 1976, supported by the advertising song "Catch It When You Can," according to marketing.ie. The brand spent decades on shelf with minimal investment, and by the time the 2019 relaunch was commissioned, it occupied an awkward position in the Irish confectionery and snacks landscape: well-remembered by older consumers, largely unknown to younger ones, and outgunned on media spend by global competitors operating at an entirely different financial scale.
Bloom responded by framing its creative philosophy explicitly. The agency characterised its approach as "Outwit, not Outspend," emphasising creative and production efficiency as the mechanism by which a domestically budgeted Irish chocolate brand could compete for attention in a category dominated by multinationals, according to Shelflife.ie. In the global confectionery market, Mars Incorporated held a value share of approximately 13.8% and Mondelez International held approximately 12.6% in 2019, according to GlobalData. In Ireland, both companies maintain extensive distribution and sustained advertising presence, meaning Catch faced competitors with resources that dwarfed its relaunch budget.
The decision to anchor the campaign in character and narrative rather than product demonstration or price-led messaging was a direct response to that competitive reality. By creating two recurring fictional characters whose enthusiasm for Catch served as the emotional core of the campaign, Bloom gave the brand a repeatable and extendable creative platform. Each new execution added texture to the same world rather than starting from scratch, allowing the €500,000 budget across the Irish market to work harder across six films, out-of-home placements, digital channels, social media, in-store activity, and point-of-sale displays, as documented by Shelflife.ie and Adworld.ie.
The creative execution for the Catch relaunch rests on a single, sustained comedic premise. Two friends, operating from the intimate and absurd setting of a garden shed, run what they sincerely believe to be a significant fan club for an Irish chocolate bar. That premise generates the tonal register that Adworld.ie described as "light hearted" in its March 2019 coverage, and it provides the structural logic for all three named executions released under the campaign.
"Jim's Personal Best" places the fan club's physical exertions in comic relief against the modest scale of their enterprise. "Paudie's Big Interview" treats an in-shed conversation with the mock seriousness of a major broadcast event. "Paudie's Curious O'Clock" mines the same vein of earnest absurdity, building character consistency across executions while ensuring each film functions as a self-contained narrative. The suite as a whole, comprising six television and online spots according to Clapboard.com, demonstrates a production discipline that allowed multiple deliverables to be drawn from a single creative environment, which aligns with Bloom's stated "Outwit, not Outspend" efficiency principle as reported by Shelflife.ie.
Creative Director on the campaign was Michael Walsh, per Clapboard.com. The production contains four media assets documented on Clapboard.com, with the first 20-second film in the series titled "Weights." The character-led format was well-suited to the media mix deployed across the Irish market: short-form narrative comedy travels across television, online video, and social media formats without requiring significant re-editing, and the recurring cast gave out-of-home and in-store executions a visual shorthand that connected back to the broadcast work.
ARCHIVENo verified performance data for "Jim's Personal Best, Paudie's Big Interview, Paudie's Curious O'Clock" is publicly available. Sales uplift figures, reach statistics, and brand tracking results have not been published by Catch, Bloom, or any trade source consulted, including Shelflife.ie, Adworld.ie, marketing.ie, or Ads of the World. The Clapboard Score for this campaign is 57 out of 100, reflecting a mid-range creative effectiveness rating based on available evidence.
Structural analysis supports a cautiously positive assessment. The campaign addressed a genuine and specific strategic problem — brand dormancy in a competitive Irish confectionery and snacks market — with a solution that matched its resource constraints. A character-based narrative platform is inherently more repeatable and media-efficient than campaign-by-campaign concept development, and the six-film structure suggests the client and agency were committed to sustained presence rather than a single burst. The choice of the Irish market as the sole geography allowed the budget, according to Shelflife.ie a sum of €500,000, to be concentrated rather than diffused.
The risk inherent in character comedy is that humour and warmth do not automatically translate to brand recall or purchase intent. The fan club conceit works as entertainment, but its connection to the specific product attributes of Catch chocolate remains implicit rather than argued. Whether the campaign succeeded in introducing Catch to younger Irish confectionery consumers, as was its stated objective per marketing.ie, cannot be determined from publicly available evidence.
"Jim's Personal Best" is one of three named film executions in Bloom's 2019 relaunch campaign for Catch, an Irish chocolate bar with over 40 years of heritage. The campaign centres on two friends running a fictional fan club from a garden shed, using character-driven comedy to reintroduce Catch to Irish confectionery consumers.
Bloom, a Dublin advertising agency, created the campaign for Catch in Ireland. Creative Director Michael Walsh led the work, according to Clapboard.com. The campaign launched on 11 March 2019, according to Shelflife.ie, and comprised six television and online spots supported by out-of-home, digital, social media, in-store, and point-of-sale channels.
The Catch relaunch campaign carried a budget of €500,000, according to both Shelflife.ie and Adworld.ie. That investment covered out-of-home, digital, social media, in-store activity, and point-of-sale displays across the Irish market, making it a concentrated domestic spend designed to restore the brand to major Irish chocolate status.
Bloom described its creative philosophy for the Catch campaign as "Outwit, not Outspend," according to Shelflife.ie. The approach prioritised creative and production efficiency to allow an Irish confectionery brand with a domestic budget to compete for audience attention against global competitors such as Mars Incorporated and Mondelez International, which held dominant global market positions in 2019 per GlobalData.
Catch originally launched in Ireland in 1976, supported by the advertising song "Catch It When You Can," according to marketing.ie. By the 2019 relaunch, the brand had been present in the Irish confectionery market for more than 40 years, though it had experienced minimal marketing investment in the intervening period, as reported by marketing.ie.
The Catch campaign, including "Paudie's Big Interview" and the broader Unofficial Fan Club suite, received a Clapboard Score of 57 out of 100. This mid-range rating reflects the campaign's creative coherence and efficient platform-building against the absence of publicly verified performance data confirming measurable impact in the Irish snacks and confectionery market.
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