Mövenpick's 2023 'Melt Away' campaign by Serviceplan Suisse repositioned the premium ice cream brand through three short films shot in the Bernese Oberland,
ARCHIVEMövenpick Melts Into the Swiss Alps With a Bold Brand Repositioning
Mövenpick's 'Melt Away' campaign is a 2023 integrated brand repositioning by Serviceplan Suisse for Froneri Switzerland, comprising three short films in which consumers visibly dissolve with pleasure against the alpine landscape of the Bernese Oberland, using fluid movement to embody the sensation of premium ice cream melting on the tongue.
The campaign launched on April 5, 2023, in Switzerland, anchored by a megaposter at Zurich Central Station before rolling out across television and digital channels throughout spring 2023. The strategic intent was clear from the outset: to bring the Mövenpick brand closer to a younger consumer demographic while reinforcing its premium positioning in the Swiss market. Rather than presenting the product through conventional appetite-appeal photography, the creative concept literalised the act of indulgence, making the sensation itself the spectacle.
Froneri Switzerland serves as the client behind the work, with Serviceplan Suisse executing the campaign after winning a competitive pitch against two other agencies, as reported by house-of-communication.com. The integrated campaign comprised three short films, with on-location photography and direction handled by British director and photographer Emma Tempest. Close-up ice cream imagery was produced separately in Amsterdam by Goodhouse Film, a production company specialising in food imagery. The result is a campaign that operates simultaneously as brand film, out-of-home spectacle, and social content — a rare integration of format and feeling in Swiss ice cream advertising.
ARCHIVEFroneri Switzerland identified a strategic gap between Mövenpick's heritage and the expectations of younger Swiss consumers. The brand required a repositioning that preserved its premium credentials while generating cultural relevance in the competitive Swiss and European ice cream landscape. The 'Melt Away' platform addressed this directly by grounding the campaign's emotional logic in a physical sensation — the experience of melting — rather than in product attributes alone.
The global ice cream market is a growing market with significant competitive pressure at the premium tier, according to research published by Bonafide Research. Within that global context, Froneri holds approximately eleven percent of global ice cream market share, as reported by htfmarketinsights.com, placing it as a substantial challenger to Unilever, which holds approximately twenty to twenty-one percent global market share according to the same source. In Switzerland, Mövenpick competes directly with Häagen-Dazs, the Nestlé-originated brand now owned by General Mills, which also targets the premium consumer with comparable price positioning and international heritage credentials. The 'Melt Away' creative differentiates Mövenpick by anchoring the brand's identity firmly in the Swiss Alps and the Bernese Oberland, lending it a geographic authenticity that neither Häagen-Dazs nor Unilever's Magnum can claim from a Swiss vantage point.
Serviceplan Suisse's decision to build the campaign around movement — specifically the fluid, dance-like dissolution of real people in a real alpine landscape — reflects a broader creative strategy of showing feeling rather than product. This approach aligns with a documented shift in premium food and beverage advertising toward experiential storytelling, as observed across the European market in the period leading into 2023. The pitch win against two competing agencies, as noted by house-of-communication.com, signals that Froneri Switzerland found in this metaphor a conviction that conventional ice cream advertising had not provided.
Emma Tempest directed and photographed all three short films that form the 'Melt Away' campaign. Tempest, a British director and photographer with a background in high-end fashion imagery, brought a visual sensibility to the Mövenpick work that set it apart from category conventions in ice cream advertising. Her prior experience with renowned fashion brands — noted by house-of-communication.com — informed the campaign's attention to movement, light, and the choreography of its protagonists within the landscape.
Filming took place over two days in the Bernese Oberland near Lake Engstlen, in Switzerland. The location was not incidental. Lake Engstlen sits within one of the most photographically distinctive alpine environments in the country, and its use grounded the campaign's claim to Swiss provenance in a landscape that audiences across Switzerland would recognise as genuinely extraordinary. Performers were filmed dancing and dissolving — their bodies rendered fluid through production technique — against snow-edged scenery and open sky, translating the campaign's central metaphor into something visceral and immediate.
The close-up ice cream shots required a separate production environment. Goodhouse Film, a production company specialising in food imagery, executed these sequences in Amsterdam, with producer Johannes Schmidt overseeing the work, as credited by clapboard.com. Agency production was managed by Carmen Aebischer, with realisation credited to Barbara Häne and Victor Borel. Executive producers on the campaign were Torsten Gerst and Jennifer Schulz. Social media production was handled by TYMA Film, with Yannis Petrone as the named contact, according to clapboard.com. The division of labour between location-based human footage in Switzerland and controlled food photography in Amsterdam reflects a sophisticated production architecture — one in which each creative element was produced in the environment most suited to it, then unified in post to form a coherent campaign world.
The 'Melt Away' campaign achieved a reported reach of five hundred and fifty million contacts across out-of-home, digital out-of-home, television, and digital channels, as reported by house-of-communication.com. That figure encompasses the full media deployment across Switzerland, beginning with the megaposter launch at Zurich Central Station and extending through the spring 2023 television and online schedule. For a Swiss domestic market of roughly nine million people, as recorded by Worldatlas.com, a reach figure of this scale indicates significant cross-platform amplification and substantial repetition across consumer touchpoints.
Reto Lüchinger, CEO of Froneri Switzerland, stated that the concept of protagonists melting away convinced the brand from the outset, as quoted by cmosmagazine.com and persoenlich.com. That executive endorsement, combined with the competitive pitch win documented by house-of-communication.com, points to a campaign that generated internal conviction before it generated public reach. The three short films also accumulated documented view counts following publication, though the figures available from public platforms reflect a narrow window of tracked engagement rather than total campaign exposure.
Clapboard rates 'Melt Away' at 63 out of 100, recognising the campaign's creative distinctiveness and geographic specificity while noting that its structural effectiveness depends heavily on the interplay between location and movement — elements that translate well to large-format out-of-home but require sustained media investment to fully register in digital environments. The campaign's integration of alpine landscape, embodied metaphor, and food craft photography represents a coherent creative system that earns its premium register without overstating it.
The 'Melt Away' campaign is a 2023 brand repositioning for Mövenpick by Serviceplan Suisse for Froneri Switzerland. It comprises three short films in which performers literally dissolve while dancing across the Swiss Alps near Lake Engstlen, translating the sensation of eating ice cream into a visual and choreographic metaphor. It launched on April 5, 2023.
British director and photographer Emma Tempest directed all three short films. Tempest brought a fashion-informed visual approach to the work, with filming taking place over two days in the Bernese Oberland near Lake Engstlen, Switzerland. Close-up ice cream sequences were produced separately in Amsterdam by food imagery specialists Goodhouse Film.
Serviceplan Suisse won a competitive pitch against two other agencies, as reported by house-of-communication.com. Froneri Switzerland CEO Reto Lüchinger cited the concept of protagonists melting away as immediately convincing, according to cmosmagazine.com. The repositioning aimed to bring Mövenpick closer to younger consumers while maintaining its premium Swiss identity.
On-location filming took place in the Bernese Oberland near Lake Engstlen in Switzerland over two days, as confirmed by clapboard.com and house-of-communication.com. The alpine landscape provided geographic authenticity central to the campaign's premium positioning. Close-up ice cream photography was produced separately in Amsterdam by Goodhouse Film, a food imagery specialist.
The campaign achieved a reported reach of five hundred and fifty million contacts across out-of-home, digital out-of-home, television, and digital channels in Switzerland, as reported by house-of-communication.com. The campaign launched with a megaposter at Zurich Central Station before extending across television and online platforms throughout spring 2023. Clapboard rates the campaign 63 out of 100.
Mövenpick's 'Melt Away' campaign anchors the brand's identity in the Swiss Alps and the Bernese Oberland, giving it a geographic authenticity that competitors Häagen-Dazs and Unilever's Magnum cannot claim from a Swiss vantage point. The embodied movement metaphor also moves beyond conventional appetite-appeal product advertising, targeting emotional experience rather than visual product presentation.
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