The Campaign

In Australia, there are no restrictions or regulatory bodies in regards to branded content. The FMCG category relies heavily on traditional advertising, like print and TV - mediums that would not have given us the engagement we required for our messaging.

Results

Dolmio commissioned research into Australia’s dependence on technology and the results were alarming. Technology has hijacked the family meal time. As a brand that believes dinnertime should bring families together Dolmio wanted to do something about this. So to highlight the problem and get people reassessing their use of technology during dinnertime, we invented The Dolmio® Pepper Hacker and began a social experiment. The Dolmio Pepper Hacker looks like a normal pepper grinder but has a unique and secret feature. Using an innovative combination of plug-and-play home automation systems and remote device management, one twist of the grinder cracks pepper and temporarily powers down TVs, shuts down Wi-Fi and disables non-native mobile apps, providing families with an opportunity to have some quality tech-free dinner time together. After building the Pepper Hackers, we gave them to the frustrated mums participating in our experiment who helped us hide cameras in their homes to capture the experiment as it unfolded. We then launched an online film with a call to action to share the film and help Dolmio bring families together at dinnertime. The film went viral sparking global discussion across both social and mainstream media with millions sharing and watching the film.

The film resonated with people across the globe and was watched and shared by millions on both YouTube and Facebook. Our audience was drawn to the compelling nature of our social experiment, the innovative Pepper Hacker device, the universal insight and the viral nature of human “freak outs” caught on hidden camera.

To say the campaign exceeded client expectations would be an understatement. The campaign exceeded the KPI’s set for online views of the film by a staggering 16,394% (KPI set at 500,000 views). In just 4 weeks we achieved: - Over 3 billion earned media impressions - Over 82 million views of the online film across YouTube and Facebook - $27.2 million in earned media Social media commentary showed our audience was inspired to ditch the tech and reconnect at dinnertime. Tens of thousands of commented, tweets praised the campaign and it’s family-centric messaging and the film achieved over 1.25 million shares on Facebook alone.

Dolmio is a brand built on traditional TV advertising that is always centred on a family of puppets. We had a poignant message to share, on a small budget and wanted to reach people the world over, so we knew traditional TV advertising wasn’t the right channel to use. So we turned to the shareable, longer format nature of branded content. Not only was it perfectly suited to the executional nature of our idea (a social experiment with hidden cameras and highly engaging reactions) but it allowed us to encourage our audience to share our film across their own social networks and spark conversation around the topic of technology hijacking family dinnertime. Something not possible using traditional TV advertising.