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Trufalie Bets on Men to Reshape Ukrainian Candy Culture
Trufalie is He is a 2019 Ukrainian film campaign created by Michurin for AVK Confectionery that positions Trufalie as the first chocolate candy designed specifically for men in the Ukrainian market.
Launched in October 2019, the campaign marks a decisive repositioning for the Trufalie brand. Where the product had previously been associated with refined, feminine taste profiles, the 2019 work — as documented on Ads of the World and Clapboard.com — pivots sharply toward a male audience, arguing that men who enjoy chocolate deserve not just permission but recognition. The tagline anchoring the effort, "Not only women love sweets," functions as both a provocation and an invitation, dismantling a cultural assumption that had long shaped confectionery marketing in Ukraine and elsewhere.
The campaign's sole media asset is a single film commercial, a format well suited to establishing character and attitude quickly. A confident male figure reclines on a car hood — an image drawn from the visual language of masculine aspiration — and makes the case directly to camera that men who eat chocolate should be appreciated by women. The tone is self-assured rather than apologetic, which is precisely the point. Trufalie is not asking for male consumers to be tolerated in the candy aisle; it is declaring the aisle theirs. This approach gives the Trufalie brand a clear, ownable position in a crowded Ukrainian Food and Drink market and establishes a lifestyle identity that extends beyond the product itself. The Clapboard Score for this campaign is 60 out of 100.
AVK Confectionery held an estimated production share of 6.03% in the Ukrainian confectionery market in 2019, according to Economics-Msu Com Ua. That figure places AVK as a meaningful but secondary player behind the market's dominant force, Roshen, which held 29.59% of 2019 production share in Ukraine, also per economics-msu.com.ua. In a competitive environment shaped by a single dominant brand, differentiation through positioning rather than product alone becomes a credible strategic tool — and that is exactly what Michurin's work for Trufalie attempts.
Ukraine's confectionery sector provides the market context that makes this pivot legible. According to Chmnu Edu Ua, Ukraine's confectionery segment comprised approximately 471,000 tonnes in 2019, representing 48.4% within the broader cited food-industry context for that year. That scale signals a mature, competitive market where share gains require either price pressure or meaningful brand distinction. Trufalie chose distinction. By declaring itself the first candy for men on the Ukrainian market, the brand claims a segment that no Ukrainian confectionery competitor had formally staked out in its advertising language. Roshen, the market leader, and Kharkiv Biscuit Factory — which held an estimated 7% production share in 2019 per economics-msu.com.ua — both address broad consumer audiences without gender-specific creative positioning at this scale.
The consumer insight driving the campaign is straightforward and durable: social conditioning around food and gender creates friction for men who enjoy confectionery. By naming that friction and resolving it with confidence rather than humour or apology, Trufalie positions itself as a brand that understands its new male audience. In the Ukrainian market, where confectionery advertising had historically leaned into femininity and elegance, this represented a genuinely uncrowded creative territory in 2019.
Director Oleg Tomin led the film production for the Trufalie is He campaign, working through Gvardiya Production House with cinematographer Evgeny Gubrenko behind the camera. Post-production was handled by Gvardiya Post and Mental Drive Studio, as documented in the campaign record. The production team brought a deliberate visual grammar to the work: the image of a man on a car hood is not incidental but chosen for its cultural resonance, drawing on the iconography of masculine confidence that Ukrainian and broader post-Soviet visual culture would recognise immediately.
The creative team at Michurin was led by Creative Director Dmytro Bolsunovskyi. Copywriting was handled by Serhii Mykhailov, with Oksana Chumak serving as junior copywriter, and visual design by Valeryi Chalyi. Managing Director Dmytro Logginov and Account Manager Julia Anikeeva oversaw the agency side of the project, with Anna Skorenko managing PR and communications. The AVK Confectionery client team included Group Brand Manager Vitalina Arbuzina, Deputy CEO Andriy Radchuk, and Brand Manager Olga Chapurna.
The creative approach is intentionally simple — one man, one setting, one argument. That simplicity is a craft decision as much as a budget consideration. A single film asset, as documented on Clapboard.com and Ads of the World, concentrates the brand's entire repositioning into a single coherent statement. The man on the car hood does not explain the candy's ingredients or taste profile; he explains why a man should want to eat it. That inversion — leading with identity rather than product — is the defining creative choice of the Trufalie is He campaign, and it gives the film a persuasive clarity that more elaborately produced work sometimes lacks.
The Trufalie is He campaign recorded 2,342 views and 8 likes on its documented platform listing, as reported on Clapboard.com. No broader verified performance data — including sales uplift, brand tracking results, or media reach figures — is publicly available for this campaign. The engagement figures on record reflect the campaign's archival footprint rather than its full market impact in Ukraine, and should be read in that context.
Structurally, the campaign demonstrates clear effectiveness in one critical dimension: category disruption. By claiming the title of Ukraine's first candy for men, Trufalie created a news moment within the Ukrainian Food and Drink space that required no additional creative assets to sustain. A single well-directed film carrying a single unambiguous brand claim is a proven format for repositioning work, particularly in markets where the category convention is uniform. Ukraine's confectionery sector, which according to Eem Com Ua reached approximately UAH 58.733 billion in production value in 2019, is precisely such a market — large, established, and convention-driven.
The campaign's weakness lies in its reliance on a single asset to carry what is ultimately a significant brand transformation. Repositioning a product's gender association is a sustained communications task, and one film, however well-executed, creates a foundation rather than a movement. The Clapboard Score of 60 out of 100 reflects this balance: the strategic insight is sharp, the execution is confident, but the documented campaign footprint suggests the repositioning work was not yet complete at the time of this asset's release.
Trufalie is He is a 2019 Ukrainian film campaign created by Michurin for AVK Confectionery. It positions Trufalie as the first candy made specifically for men in the Ukrainian market. The campaign features a confident male figure on a car hood arguing that men who enjoy chocolate should be appreciated by women.
Michurin, a Kyiv-based creative agency, made the Trufalie is He campaign for AVK Confectionery in 2019. Creative Director Dmytro Bolsunovskyi led the agency team. Director Oleg Tomin helmed production through Gvardiya Production House, with post-production by Gvardiya Post and Mental Drive Studio.
AVK Confectionery, Trufalie's parent brand, held an estimated 6.03% production share in Ukraine's confectionery market in 2019, according to economics-msu.com.ua. The market was dominated by Roshen at 29.59%. Trufalie's male-focused repositioning was designed to carve a distinct niche within this competitive Ukrainian Food and Drink landscape.
The Trufalie is He campaign received a Clapboard Score of 60 out of 100. The score reflects a strategically sharp insight and confident execution, balanced against the campaign's limited documented footprint and its reliance on a single film asset to carry a substantial brand repositioning in the Ukrainian market.
Trufalie is He directly challenged the Ukrainian confectionery industry's convention of targeting women by declaring itself the first candy for men. No major competitor, including market leader Roshen, had staked out gender-specific male positioning at this scale in Ukraine's confectionery category before October 2019, according to available campaign records.
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