Hellmann’s is made with real, simple ingredients. And since 2007, the brand’s mission has been to bring more real food to Canadians through the “Real Food Movement”. Last year, the launches of McDonald’s at-home mayonnaise and Heinz “Seriously Good Mayo” threatened Hellmann’s dominant market position. The agency’s challenge was to defend Hellmann’s #1 market share in order to re-assert Hellmann’s commitment to evolving its “Real Food Movement” in a meaningful way.

The core strategy emerged from the insight that millions of Canadians go hungry while billions of dollars of food is discarded. Real food is too precious to waste. Hellmann’s Real Food Rescue recovers leftover food that would otherwise be wasted and delivers it to people in need. Canada wastes enough food every minute to feed a stadium, so to make Canada’s food waste problem more tangible, the team decided to launch the campaign by giving out free food to everyone at a sold-out Toronto FC match. The company “rescued” food from Sobeys supermarkets and at halftime, after having fed thousands of spectators, played a jumbotron video to show everyone exactly where their meal had come from. The video contained footage of the rescue and preparation of the meals served to the crowd. This unconventional sampling brought awareness to the program, demonstrated the scale of the food waste problem, and showed people that it’s not “food waste” until you waste it.

The activation and crowd reactions to this reveal were filmed, and from this content the team 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 video and social paid media. The campaign challenged influencers to create less food waste in one week than would fit into an empty jar of Hellmann’s, and document their performance. They inspired Canadians to fight food waste by showcasing how creative one can be with wasted food.

The online videos conveyed the brand’s message using a typeface entirely constructed from food waste. The campaign also included tips and leftover recipes, which taught Canadians such things as how to store different food to keep it fresh, or how to make broth using bones. All of this was hosted on the microsite, and supported by PR and social. The “Real Food Rescue” food waste recovery program is now ongoing at Scotiabank Arena. After every game, leftover food is collected from the premium suites and redistributed to those who need it. Other stadiums across Canada have also reached out to join the program.

Through the program, over 100,000 meals are expected to be distributed to needy people by May 2020. The campaign saw significant social impact at corporate level (food recovery at stadium events), community level (assisting food banks) and consumer level (personal food waste education). To date the campaign has over 13.5 million earned media impressions, over 2 million organic impressions, an engagement rate for social influencer content at 3.5x industry benchmarks, and a view-through rate for educational tips over 80% above the industry benchmark. Most importantly, the team successfully defended Hellman’s #1 market share against new entrants.