The salad dressings category has limited vegan options and is primarily served by niche and often expensive brands. Hellmann’s, an iconic mayonnaise brand, was not known for its vegan offerings. For the launch of its vegan salad dressings, the objective was to raise awareness of their vegan offerings and grow their category share.
Targeting only vegans would be a challenge, since only 3% of Canadians identified as vegan. In addition to the small base, the current cultural context skewed very negatively against vegans. So, we decided to expand our audience through an engaging and entertaining influencer campaign. We partnered with loved and trusted influencers to give vegan food some love on their favorite food platform, through an innovative experience, to convert more fans.
Introducing, The Vegans: the world’s first award show for vegan food, exclusively on TikTok. We partnered with vegan and non-vegan foodie creators across Canada to demonstrate the versatility of vegan cuisine using Hellmann’s Vegan Dressings. Rather than simply posting recipe videos, we integrated into TikTok’s unique platform mechanics of duets, stitches and video replies to allow creators to compete interactively to create the best vegan recipes across three categories. On veganism’s biggest night, we recreated all the classic tropes of an award show right down to the acceptance speech, or in our case, the acceptance stitch. We awarded The Best Appetizer in a Supporting Role, Best Leading Main Dish, Best Original Lunch Item and The People’s Choice – all live on TikTok. Even the critics gave us a standing ovation with a 95% positive sentiment and 27.5% growth in category share, turning vegan hate into Hellmann’s love.
The Vegans captivated users on TikTok, raising awareness of Hellmann’s Vegan Dressings, driving interest in veganism on the platform and most importantly, increasing Hellmann’s category share.
