Knorr has been a staple in Canadian’s homes for decades. But as eating and cooking habits have changed, Knorr has struggled to maintain its market position with Canadian Gen Zs and Millennials as a go-to home cooking ingredient. The brand faced a steep decline in its brand health scores for ‘meets needs’ (-16pts) and poor sales performance (-3.4% YTD). Our challenge? To turn our sales trajectory from negative to positive and get younger Canadians cooking at home again by meeting them where they were getting food inspiration and proving Knorr could satisfy their desire for affordable, uncomplicated, and yummy food.
Studies show 88% of Canadians believe home-made meals are more satisfying. But strapped for time, cash and cooking confidence, younger Canadians have abandoned home cooking routines in favour of the convenience of fast food ordered via delivery apps. The numbers are stark: QSR brands invest $500m in media in Canada to dominate the food advertising space on younger-leaning platforms such as TikTok.
But under the surface, younger Canadians are looking for alternative food inspiration and recipe discovery. Roughly 70% of Gen Zs and 42% of Millennials in Canada use TikTok, where communities like #CookTok have over 2.9 billion views and #fakeawayrecipes had surged to 40 million views by summer 2023. And with 81% of Gen Zs stating they have made recipes they discovered on social media, we knew the appetite for simple, tasty home cooked food was there. We just needed to join the right social conversations and help younger Canadians trade fast food for good food, made fast with Knorr.
With fast food as our foil and TikTok as our key battleground for younger Canadians’ attention, we needed a campaign that would go toe-to-toe with the QSR behemoths. So, we did just that, in a way that made Knorr part of the conversation but delivered on the brand promise that with Knorr, homemade meals are just as delicious, simple and affordable as fast food. Introducing Yummy K’s, a first-of-its-kind takeout joint and digital pickup service, open for one extended weekend only in Toronto.
We knew Canadians would believe that meals using Knorr could stand up against fast food once they’d tried them. But the call to action would need to come from someone they believed in. So: who better to partner with to help design and launch our campaign than celebrity chef Matty Matheson (715.3k TikTok followers), fresh from his star role in TV show The Bear. His unique presence, style and credibility added culinary kudos and cultural clout to Yummy K’s from start to finish.
With his own burger joint Matty’s Patty’s thriving in downtown Toronto, Matty knows great fast food. He helped us borrow inspiration and iconography from the world of fast food and #foodtok – from crave-worthy food photos, to bold colours and typography, down to unexpected taste combinations and click-of-a-button order mechanism, to outfit the exterior of a home on the edge of Trinity Bellwoods Park and transform it into a takeout joint. We curated the customer experience with Knorr “Taste Combo” combo meals, a ‘drive-thru’-style pick-up window and Happy Meal-inspired packaging.
Matty also designed the Yummy K’s menu, creating dishes inspired by trending dishes on TikTok such as Chilled Chili Soba and BBQ Chopped Chicken Sandwich. Leveraging his social media presence was key to building hype with Gen Z and Millennial Torontonians. We teased the pop-up by partnering with both Matty Matheson and popular mid-tier foodie influencers, such as Hash and Lyss and Bridgette Vong, to create TikTok content inviting consumers to stop by, in tandem with running targeted ads to intercept Canadians where fast-food giants were reaching them. We optimized Matty’s videos for TikTok by using platform-specific graphics and supers that made them feel less like ads. We complemented this with surround-sound tactics, dominating Toronto’s busiest subway stations with awareness messaging and grassroots wild postings within a 2 km (1.24 mile) radius of Yummy K’s in the weeks leading up to the activation.
For maximum impact and to provide another point of entry into the #FoodTok conversation, we built on the momentum from a recent US Knorr launch which featured Cardi B as the spokesperson. Using TikTok’s comment video reply function, we had our Canadian food influencers reply to Cardi B’s Taste Combo video, answering Cardi’s call to create your own Taste Combo with Knorr. Each influencer included a different Knorr product to imagine their recipe, showcasing the deliciousness and simplicity of cooking with Knorr. Finally, we created a dedicated Taste Combos landing page which hosted Yummy K’s recipes, popup information and Matty’s TikTok content.
Yummy K’s opened to the public Thursday, August 10 and SOLD OUT three times over; the demand was so overwhelming we were closed by midday Saturday, August 12. Over 1,000 Yummy K’s combos were sold in less than three days – 2.5x the anticipated sales and exceeding sales of Matty Matheson’s eponymous burger joint, Matty’s Patties, just down the street.
The impact was even bigger on social media. Matty’s TikTok launch video showcasing Yummy K’s menu item BBQ Chopped Chicken Sandwich was trending at #2 and #3 of all videos in Canada for five days and has over 5m views to date. The campaign also delivered:
And there’s been a lasting impact on the brand. The Yummy K’s campaign helped Knorr achieve a growth of +4.4% in L4 and drove a staggering +16% one-week post-campaign. Through Yummy K’s, Knorr’s brand power also grew in 2023, recovering its “meets needs” score by +12pts while competitor brands experienced YoY declines. First-party research shows Knorr is now strongly endorsed by consumers for being a trusted brand with delicious taste and versatility.
