Hellmann's worked to reduce food waste and serve the hungry. To demonstrate the untapped value of discarded food, the brand fed an entire soccer stadium with recovered leftovers.
Objective and Context:
Hellmann's knew that four million Canadians go hungry every year while billions of dollars of food are simultaneously discarded annually. This fact gave Hellmann's the information it needed to understand where it could make a difference and how it could affect the amount of food that is wasted every year while at the same time defending Hellmann's No. 1 market share and its association with the "Real Food Movement" by bringing more "real food" to real people. An early step began at the corporate level by partnering with Maple Leaf Sports and Entertainment to reduce the food waste at stadium events and by donating this food to people in need rather than throwing it out. To measure the success, Hellmann's created a goal of providing over 100,000 meals to Canadians in need by May 2020.
Target Audience:
The target audience was Canadians aged 25 to 54 who were buying their own groceries. More specifically, Hellmann's sought to target empathetic individuals who were looking to make a change in social issues, particularly hunger and food waste.
Creative Strategy:
Hellmann's teamed up with food recovery expert Jean-François Archambault and Maple Leaf Sports & Entertainment (Canada's largest sports and entertainment organization) to launch Hellmann's "Real Food Rescue" initiative. This initiative recovered leftover food from premium suites after events at Scotiabank Arena and redistributed it through Second Harvest to local families in need while educating Canadians to on how to reduce food waste at home by connecting them to educational tips.
Targeting ages 25 to 54 meant that the campaign spoke to those who were doing all their own grocery shopping. This campaign thus helped them to get the most out of their grocery stores and reduce their food waste at the same time, all while encouraging Canadians to buy and use Hellmann's products.
Overall Campaign Execution:
Hellmann's started its launch by giving out free food at a sold-out Toronto FC match. There were two sampling stations at different ends of the stadium and dozens of customer service representatives to deliver meals.
At halftime, after having fed thousands of spectators, Hellmann's played a jumbotron video to show everyone exactly where their meal had come from. What the crowd had believed were typical delicious Hellmann's free samples were made with "rescued" food.
Hellmann's created an online video from the footage it filmed at the Toronto FC match. This video reinforced the campaign's message that Canadians waste enough food every minute to feed a stadium. This unconventional sampling method brought awareness to Hellmann's program while demonstrating the scale of the food waste problem and showed people that it's not "food waste" until you waste it.
This campaign used video, social, out-of-home marketing, and on-the-ground forms of activation to raise awareness about the food waste that Canadians create. The microsite allowed consumers to have somewhere to get more information about how to reduce food waste at home. Twitter was used to make the campaign accessible to consumers and linked them to more educational tips about food waste. Out-of-home boards were also used to raise awareness.
Mobile Execution:
Mobile was a major part of this campaign, as most of the content was distributed online. From this content, the brand developed multiple long-form and short-form videos, teasers, and a mini-documentary about the Dinner with Dignity soup kitchen. The campaign was promoted nationally through online videos and social paid media. The teasers appeared on sites like YouTube and Twitter to help reach its target audience. Hellmann's microsite, PR, influencers, and social content worked in unison to teach Canadians how to reduce home food waste.
The brand content related to the campaign has earned over 13.5 million media impressions to date, and the educational tips' view-through rates are over 80 percent above the industry benchmark. In addition, the campaign achieved over two million organic impressions.
