Bouillon and flashy, celebrity-driven ad campaigns aren’t something that typically have a strong association.
Knorr and Cardi B are looking to change that as part of a higher-order goal for the Unilever cooking brand to reach young people and turn them into a new generation of home cooks.
The marketing objective of this campaign – which used United Entertainment Group for celebrity and influencer management and MullenLowe for the creative – isn’t just to introduce the brand’s new Knorr Taste Combos concept into the market, but to encourage people to cook one more meal at home every week. “We know when you cook with whole foods, you are already ahead of the game when it comes to nutrition,” says Gina Kiroff, North America marketing lead for Knorr at Unilever. “Our purpose statement as a brand is to provide delicious, nutritious food that is affordable to all Canadians and Americans.”
The difficulty for many North Americans, however, is that cooking and eating a healthy diet appears to be overly time-consuming and not affordable on a regular basis. When you’re a working parent and have to put a meal on the table, for instance, it can seem daunting. “There’s a stat that says many Americans think doing their taxes is easier than eating healthy. So, we started to think, ‘how do we simplify this? How do we make nutritious meals accessible? How can we use our products and recipes as a gateway to more home-cooking?’”
That is how Knorr Taste Combos were born – a menu of recipes that can be prepared at home in under 30 minutes. The recipes have specific criteria, of course: they must include a protein, a vegetable and a Knorr product, and if followed they can lead to an easy, quick homemade meal for under $4 a person in a family of four.
Knorr knew that if it was going to make cooking a meal from scratch as appealing as fast food, it would have to take an “if you can’t beat them, join them” approach. “What we know in the competitive landscape is that fast food is delicious, crave-worthy and accessible. People love it. I love it. So we decided to borrow from that industry to make home-cooking just as sexy,” Kiroff says.
The brand set about using proven fast food marketing tropes: dramatic voiceovers in commercials and special effects on the food photography to get the taste buds salivating. The marketing began with two TV spots. But communicating the concept this way wasn’t the end, the team needed to build even more excitement. They decided to bring in a celebrity to share the message.
“Tim Hortons has had such great success with Justin Bieber. It felt like they used a celebrity in a very authentic way. And we wanted to do something similar. Serendipitously, Cardi B was on her social media and was making a recipe using Knorr bouillon. We thought, ‘maybe she would be willing to partner with us.’”
Cardi B was an ideal choice because she is a genuine user. Outside of her music, Cardi B’s Instagram followers know her for videos of her domestic life, raising her kids and preparing meals. When it comes to Knorr in particular, she grew up with the brand. This tapped into the idea of heritage that Knorr has often marketed around – but which younger generations don’t necessarily have.
Kiroff, who was born in and has lived most of her life in Toronto, manages the North American portfolio which includes both Canada and the U.S. It’s critical to her job that she understands the cultural differences and specific nuances of both countries.
The biggest differences between the two, she explains, are two-fold. “The level of diversity – ethnic cuisine – and how it has permeated mainstream culture in Canada, is one. Canadians also tend to cook more at home as a baseline already, within the context of North America. We can push the envelope in some of the combos that we’re doing in Canada versus in the U.S.”
There are, of course, generalized favourites that are cross border with regards to penetration data of top dishes – both countries love pizza, tacos, burgers – but in Canada, Kiroff notices clear Asian, Indian, Filipino influences in society. Think more curry recipes, for example. “We can explore more around flavours in Canada because of the great food scene that exists,” she says.
