CHALLENGE

Knorr is a brand that’s been a staple in Canadians’ homes for decades. But as eating and cooking habits have changed, Knorr has struggled to maintain its market position with Canadian Gen Zs and Millennials as a go-to home cooking ingredient for quick, delicious meals. The brand faced a steep decline in its brand health scores for ‘meets needs’ (-16pts) and poor sales performance (-2.9% YTD). Our challenge? To arrest this slide by meeting younger Canadians where they were getting food inspiration and showing Knorr could satisfy their desire for affordable, uncomplicated and yummy food, their way.

INSIGHT

Studies show that nearly half of Gen Z (47%) and Millennials (49%) consider themselves ‘foodies’, while an overwhelming majority of Canadians (88%) believe meals made from scratch are more satisfying. But strapped for time, cash and cooking confidence – just 33% of Gen Z consider themselves skilled cooks – many younger Canadians have abandoned their home cooking routines in favour of the convenience and craveable taste of fast food ordered via delivery apps. The numbers are stark: Millennials spend 3X more than Baby Boomers each month on fast food, and QSR brands invest $500m in media in Canada to dominate the food advertising space on younger-leaning platforms such as TikTok.  

But when you scratch under the surface, you clearly find younger Canadians looking for alternative food inspiration and recipe discovery. #CookTok has over 2.9 billion views and #fakeawayrecipes – content specifically about making healthier versions of fast food – had surged to 40 million views by summer 2023. The appetite for simple, tasty home cooked food was there. And with 81% of Gen Zs stating they have made recipes they discovered on social media, we just needed to insert ourselves into the right social conversations and help Canadians trade fast food for good food, made fast with Knorr.

IDEA

With fast food as our foil and social media as our key battleground for younger Canadians’ attention, we needed a campaign that would make Knorr part of the social conversation but deliver on the brand promise that with Knorr, homemade meals are just as delicious, simple and affordable as fast food. Introducing Yummy K’s: a first-of-its-kind takeout joint and digital delivery service, open for one extended weekend in Toronto.

To add social clout and culinary credibility to Yummy K’s, we tapped celeb chef Matty to design the takeout menu. He took inspiration from TikTok trending dishes and fast food classics to develop simple, tasty meals such as Chilled Chilli Soba and BBQ Chopped Chicken Sandwich. We then leveraged his social media presence to build hype with Torontonians by teasing Yummy Ks with a Matty-fronted vertical launch video and using targeted ads on TikTok and Instagram to intercept Canadians where fast-food giants were reaching them. We complemented this with local OOH, dominating Toronto’s busiest subway stations with awareness messaging and grassroots wild postings within a 2 km (1.24 mile) radius of Yummy K’s.

Tapping into how and where Canadians naturally go for fast food, we partnered with pick-up app Ritual so customers could seamlessly place orders on their phone. Both Ritual and our beverage partner Sapsucker promoted the campaign through their social channels.  

To embed Knorr more deeply in the #FoodTok conversation, we built on the momentum from the recent US Taste Combos launch featuring Cardi B. Using TikTok’s comment video reply function, we had mid-tier Canadian food influencers, we had mid-tier Canadian food influencers such as Hash and Lyss and Bridgette Vong reply to Cardi B’s Taste Combo video, answering Cardi’s call to create your own Taste Combo with their own Knorr-inspired recipe videos. Our influencers also supported the campaign by shooting and sharing content from the IRL Yummy K’s experience to their TikTok pages and Instagram Stories. Finally, we created a dedicated Taste Combos landing page which hosted Yummy K’s recipes, popup information and Matty’s TikTok content.

RESULTS

Yummy K’s sold out three times; over 1,000 Yummy K’s combos were sold in under three days – 2.5x the anticipated sales.

But the impact was even bigger on social media. Matty’s TikTok launch video showcasing Yummy K’s menu item BBQ Chopped Chicken Sandwich was the #2 Trending Video across all of Canada and has had over 5M views to date. The surround sound social activations also produced:  

🔥88m total campaign impressions. 

🔥Over 11m views and 70k total engagements on influencer partner content. 

🔥6.8% growth on Knorr’s Instagram channel.

🔥70k engagements with influencer content.

🔥2m views and over 35k CTRs on Knorr owned content.  

And there’s been a lasting impact on the brand. The Yummy K’s campaign helped Knorr achieve a growth of +4.4% in L4 and drove +16% one-week post-campaign. First-party research shows Knorr is now strongly endorsed by consumers for being a trusted brand with delicious taste and versatility. 

In 2023, we set out to get Knorr out of the cupboard and have Canadians across the country experience the brand in a new, bold and delicious way – and it landed brilliantly. Matty Matheson’s video was the #2 trending video on TikTok in CA, we sold 250% more Taste Combos than planned, and real consumers stopped and engaged, saying “this was the best brand pop up they had ever seen”! And the most brilliant part about it all, is we landed a marketer’s dream – turning a consumer activation into business results and transforming Knorr in Canada! We grew brand power +110bps while our top competitor declined; we grew Knorr bouillon penetration in Ontario +250bps, and we turned POS from negative to positive. Let the Knorr transformation continue in 2024! 

Shagufta Hooda, Associate Marketing Director, Knorr Canada