- BRAND:
- Knorr
- BRAND OWNER:
- Unilever
- CATEGORY:
- Food
- REGION:
- Argentina
- Australia
- Brazil
- Canada
- France
- Germany
- Mexico
- The Netherlands
- Philippines
- South Africa
- United Kingdom
- United States
- DATE:
- April - May 2016
- AGENCY:
- PHD
- MEDIA CHANNEL:
- Digital,Online,PR
Insight
There’s never been a better time to be a food brand.
However, as each year passes, big food becomes a little less relevant, as a new wave of food brands that better meet the heightened expectations of food lovers are stealing market share across the globe.
Knorr, as the biggest cooking brand in the world, had to evolve to stay relevant.
The first step in this progression, was to better understand the power of flavour in people’s lives.
PHD conducted a study amongst 12,000 people in 12 markets and what it found out intrigued and inspired...
The majority of people surveyed would rather give up sex, their careers, their social media profiles and even their right to vote over flavour; but even more intriguing was the importance of flavour in relationships.
78% of people would be more attracted to their partner if they enjoyed the same flavours.
One in three claim that if their partner didn’t share the same flavour palette, they would be worried about their long-term future together.
Flavour was more powerful than the agency thought.
Strategy
Having discovered flavour was a key component of compatibility, the agency would use this insight to inspire an activation that would help it connect with food lovers and food culture in a more authentic, relevant and talkable manner than ever before.
It would explore whether someone’s flavour personality, determined by the Knorr Flavour Profiler, a digital tool PHD launched with the campaign, could ultimately help people find #LoveAtFirstTaste.
A social experiment, captured as a film, would spark intrigue and interest across the world, inspiring others to do the same and find out their own Knorr Flavour Profile along the way.
In order to give both the creative idea and the digital tools that supported it the best chance of doing the job they had been designed to do, the role for media was focused on three areas: -
1. Give the whole world the chance to experience #LoveAtFirstTaste - By distributing the hero film and associated edits in the newsfeeds and the viewsfeeds of food lovers across the world, it would spark conversation and desire for people to determine their own flavour profile.
2. Take the Knorr Flavour Profiler out of the hub and into the newsfeed - To scale the impact and efficacy of the profiler, bespoke partnerships with tech platform PlayBuzz and Social Food Juggernaut TasteMade, would natively seed the profiler and the meal inspiration that sat inside it across the open and social web, opening up new sources of attention for the brand and creating alternative routes into the profiler.
3. Relentlessly pursue marginal gains in distribution - A synchronised media and PR launch across 12 markets within a campaign command centre at Unilever HQ, would allow the agency to understand which assets were most effective in unlocking the attention and action of audiences in each market it activated in, thus increasing the reach and resonance of the campaign for each € deployed.
Execution
In order to give #LoveAtFirstTaste the best chance of penetrating popular culture, the agency needed a quick start, so it synchronised PR coverage and accelerated video distribution across the largest video and social platforms on the web.
In a first for Twitter, PHD combined ‘First View’ with ‘Conversational Video’ cards, to pose the question as to whether people believed in #LoveAtFirstGlance or #LoveAtFirstTaste.
On Facebook, it reached all available ‘foodies’ across its Top 10 markets through the opening days of the command centre – dropping into the newsfeeds of over 150M people across the Globe.
To scale beyond the newsfeed, the agency used YouTube’s TrueView and Unruly’s emotional targeting to reach people pre-disposed to engage with the hero film.
Once it had reached critical mass, PHD launched bespoke media partnerships with PlayBuzz & Tastemade, to scale the impact and efficacy of the Knorr Flavour Profiler beyond the website.
PlayBuzz rebuilt and natively distributed the profiler via thousands of publishers across the open web, whilst Tastemade built a ‘hands-on’ recipe video series inspired by the profiler, distributed on their owned platforms, as well as by the agency to target foodies, need-states and flavour preferences across Facebook, Instagram & Twitter in firsts for the brand.
With all assets and activities controlled via a command centre at Unilever HQ, the agency was able to monitor and act upon the cost of distribution, the social reaction, the media’s reaction to and brand impact of a range of assets in real time, scaling optimisations globally with immediate effect.
Results
#LoveAtFirstTaste captured the attention and imagination of the newsfeeds and the viewsfeeds across the globe.
Currently sitting at 112M views across all platforms, and topping the viral charts, not only did people engage with the story (2x audience retention for films of a similar length), it created a spark that triggered a huge social reaction in Knorr's favour, with over 2.7M social actions taking place in the first two weeks, 400K Likes and 200K shares of the main film and associated assets; with 1.87M clicking to find out their own flavour profile.
As anticipated, the media partnerships scaled the impact of the Knorr Flavour Profiler, with PlayBuzz doubling the volume of people engaging with it, with less than 10% of the campaign budget, whilst Tastemade’s hands-on recipe series has driven 9M views of Knorr product demos, with completion rates over 10x higher and share rates over 50x higher than typical advertising on Facebook.
This groundswell of interest triggered a huge reaction from the media, with the campaign receiving coverage on talkshows, radio stations, newspapers and websites across the globe, generating 1.4 billion PR impressions along the way.
Brand favourability is shifting where results are available: US +1500bps, France +900bps, UK +900bps… and market share increased by 140bps in May, during and immediately after the campaign.
Not bad for a 175 year old cooking brand.
