The Campaign

The creative idea was ‘A taste of home’. The online video told the story of a chef who was unable to get home to be with his family at CNY. It spoke honestly about the sacrifices that chefs make to put food on the table for the celebrations that everyone else enjoys. The purpose of the film was to start a conversation among professional chefs and let them know that Knorr respected their sacrifice and supported them in their professional life.

Creative Execution

The online video told the story of a chef working in a kitchen at CNY. In the film he grabs a moment to contact his family who are having their CNY banquet together, but without him. Knorr’s hero chef shares his love and regrets about being away from his family and then gets back to the hardest shift of the year, preparing banquets for everyone else. Tencent’s data platform allowed for precision targeting of chefs, using 6 different data pools, such as people that had applied for catering roles online or people that followed chefs and restaurants on We Chat. The online video was released on Tencent’s We Chat Moments and reached only professional chefs.

92% of chefs clicked on the online video. 73% of chefs liked the video in social and over one third of the views of the video came from social sharing. The video was seen 35,847,222 times in total. The overall Knorr campaign interaction was 50% higher than the previous year, sales grew 21% year on year and the campaign generated tens of millions of euro in sales. (Source : Unilever and Unilever’s media agency)

The vast majority of chefs in China are migrant workers. Everyone else travels home at CNY to be with their family, but chefs remain at work preparing food for everyone else. Online video told their story in a powerful, but honest way. The role of the video was to open a conversation with chefs and get them sharing the Knorr campaign. The video was supported with a series of 6 different mobile engagements that were designed to get chefs interacting with the Knorr brand and sharing relevant content with their friends and family in the period running up to CNY. These engagements used PINcodes on Knorr products to deliver a measurable sales effect. Mobile was chosen as the core channel, because chefs don’t have time to watch peak time TV. The screen they carry in their pocket all day is also the only one that they can see