Helados Bon marketing analysis: how a family brand became part of Dominican culture

Few Dominican companies have a track record like Helados Bon. In this analysis we want to share how a family venture became part of a country’s culture, and what a business owner can copy from it without having its budget.

Some context, with sources at the end: the company was founded in 1972 by the Moreno family, became a franchise model in the early 1980s and today has 315 ice cream shops across the country. In 2011 Grupo Nutresa acquired 81 % of its shares, and since June 2025 it has been present in Miami and Orlando.

Helados Bon marketing that builds the brand

This image shows the power of Helados Bon’s marketing. When the Moreno family began expanding between 1972 and 1980, it used carts and vendors to take its product to more communities. The carts are still part of its fleet.

The same goes for the larger motor vehicles. My reading as a business owner is that the revenue from these vehicles probably does not leave a direct return that pays for them: there is maintenance, the refrigeration system and the driver’s salary. Their reason to exist lies elsewhere, in the brand recall they leave on the street.

Something similar happens with billboards. Keeping them up takes a considerable monthly investment, and they do not aim at today’s sales but at brand recognition. The sum of three elements, the push carts, the motor vehicles and the billboards, explains why Helados Bon is part of Dominicans’ daily life.

Its music has the same purpose. With radio jingles and its anthem, also available on Spotify, the brand wants its song to be etched into Dominican DNA. When it turned 50 it launched the Chocoleyenda flavor: brand recall is fed with actions like this, year after year.

Helados Bon marketing that drives sales

So far, brand recall. Now let’s look at the marketing that is generating sales.

Google Ads. When we did this analysis in 2024, Google’s Ads Transparency Center showed 41 ads from Helados Bon, S.A. This is advertising with purchase intent and, unlike vehicles and billboards, it can be measured.

YouTube. Children of generation “Alpha” watch ads on YouTube, and that advertising is a way to show them what we want their parents to buy. Helados Bon ties it to a positive cause: a child who becomes a hero by helping save the corals together with his parents and the brand.

Instagram and Facebook. To reach generation “Z”, the brand promotes its Corallium flavor in partnership with FUNDEMAR, which works to protect and restore the corals on the beaches of the Dominican Republic. The ad says that, with every purchase, you support FUNDEMAR in its mission to mitigate coral bleaching and protect marine biodiversity.

Notice what it does not say: it barely talks about the flavor. Helados Bon knows that people who buy that ice cream do not do it for the flavor but for the cause, a wish to be part of something bigger. Everything is aligned with its mission and values, which you can see on the official Helados Bon page.

What could Helados Bon improve?

With so much budget, reach and authority it seems unnecessary to think about it, but it is not. Its published vision is to be the leading ice cream brand in the Caribbean region by 2030. A company with that ambition should, in my opinion, take care of these four things.

1. Feature its campaign on the website

Despite the Corallium flavor’s leading role in the advertising, it was not featured when you entered its website at the time of our analysis. Putting the whole weight of the cause on FUNDEMAR’s shoulders is risky.

2. Make better use of its partners

When you work with others, the key is to use the partner’s voice to carry your message, not to force your own. In FUNDEMAR’s case, pinning the Helados Bon post among its top three pieces of content would work better, as long as the other posts explain how corals are rescued and how people take part. That way, people who follow the foundation for its content would identify more with buying the ice cream.

3. More interactive experiences for children

Using paper recycled from the beaches to create illustrated books that tell the story of the ad, and handing them out in schools in low-income areas, would be a real show of social work. Turning the ad into an interactive experience on the website, or in an app, could also boost the brand’s authority and collect donations.

4. Take care of the quality of the street experience

The vehicles should bring happiness and reinforce the brand. Everything seen on the street, from the condition of the vehicle to the way the vendor treats people, communicates. It is a brand risk if such a visible fleet does not live up to the ice cream.

What you can apply in your business

1. Separate what builds the brand from what sells. A sign, a uniform or a song is not measured by the day’s sales.
2. Give every piece a goal. Brand recall or sales. If you do not know which, you cannot measure it.
3. Choose a cause your customer already values and tell it consistently on every channel.
4. Your website must feature what your advertising features. If the ad talks about a product, the first thing the person who clicks sees should be that product.

If you want to review with us how to separate brand marketing from sales marketing in your business, message us on WhatsApp. And if measurable results interest you, see how we apply them in dental marketing.

Sources

• Diario Libre, Doña Ligia Portalatín, founder of Helados Bon, passes away (in Spanish).
• elCaribe, Chocoleyenda: the new flavor to celebrate 50 years of Helados Bon (in Spanish).
• Helados Bon, official company page (in Spanish).
• Ownership and expansion data (Nutresa 2011, United States 2025): Acento and elCaribe, accessed on October 24, 2026.