In 2023, Canadians were facing yet another tough year. Interest rates were rising, and a cost-of-living crisis meant that they were stretching their already thin gas and grocery dollars even further.
This is where Becel’s Kind Hearts Fund — Canada’s favourite margarine brand’s charitable organization — steps in. Just by buying Becel, you support the Kind Hearts Fund, which donates $500k to fund essentials in food banks across Canada.
Becel understands that when times are tough, kindness is something Canadians need more than ever — but when the cost of basic necessities goes up, our ability to do nice things for each other goes down.
Becel and The Kind Hearts Fund wanted to give Canadians one more way to support each other and spread kindness. Without spending their own money.
Beyond donating, the brand had their heart set on doing more. The aim was to mobilise Candians to spread kindness in small, meaningful ways; to make doing a kind act for someone else immediately accessible to anyone in Canada; and for people to be able to act in whatever way made sense to them.
So we created The Kindest Store — a 24-hour, virtual pop-up store where Canadians could shop for acts of kindness to give to others, spreading kindness, without spending their own money.
The Kindest Store was stocked with acts of kindness, like sending flowers, taking someone out for coffee, topping up someone’s gas, and many more. Canadians could purchase these acts by publicly committing to fulfil the kind act on a social platform of their choice, and then we gave them the means to make it happen — it didn’t cost them anything. We even restocked the store multiple times throughout the day to ensure that anyone, in any time zone, could shop.
But we didn’t want our store inventory to limit the amount of kindness we could spread, so we added one more component — a big act of kindness sweepstakes. We asked people what they would do if they could do one big act of kindness. To enter for a chance to make it happen, they had to post their big kind act idea to social, spreading even more kindness online.
Our store was designed to directly connect Becel with kindness, and to help Canadians spread kindness across Canada just through the simple act of shopping. Together, we wanted to brighten days, hearts, and lives, one kind act at a time — and we did just that.
Because money shouldn’t stand between Canadians and kindness.
The Kindest Store was the most successful store to never earn a dime.
We got Canadians to commit to 3.8K acts of kindness — 2,539% of the goal.
It surpassed our goal of connecting Becel to kindness by 730%, driving 7.3M impressions.
Canadians talked about kindness — mentioning the campaign 1.3K times — surpassing the talkability goal 2.8x.
Most importantly, people didn’t just talk; they took action.
The campaign triggered a measurable shift in Canadians’ ability to spread kindness. Small act stock sold out at each drop in 20, eight, and then two minutes, respectively — supporting Canadians in committing 960 small acts of kindness, with the last drop being so popular it crashed the internet (well actually just the website for a minute, but still!)
Beyond this 100% fulfilment rate, Canadians also entered our sweepstakes, pledging to commit big acts of kindness 3.8K times. This was 2,539% of the goal.
Within two hours of opening the store, the campaign trended on Twitter.
Media and influencers also took note, driving incremental PR coverage from Strategy Online and VITA and receiving attention from influential Canadians like Ottawa KISS radio host Ryan Lindsay, MMA Fighter Xavier "The Breadman" Alaoui, and Drag Race Canada participant @jadashadahudson.
Finally, younger Canadians paid attention to the brand for the first time, with a 3% increase in the 18-to-34-year-old audience on Instagram, the brand’s primary channel.
