Most people don’t realize Dr. Oetker is made in Canada. Even though they have two factories in Ontario, over 400 Canadian employees, and locally sourced ingredients, they’re often mistaken for an import. With more Canadians actively looking to buy homegrown products, that disconnect was a missed opportunity.
This was a net-new campaign built to shift perception and evolve the conversation around “Made in Canada” beyond tariffs and politics. Our goal was to show up in a way that felt proudly Canadian, a little unexpected, and totally shareable.
The business objective was to boost awareness of Dr. O’s Canadian-made pizzas and support a lift in sales for our local SKUs.
KPIs included social engagement (likes, shares, comments, UGC), increased social impressions and follower growth, and a measurable lift in awareness, recall, and sentiment using a third-party brand study.
The communication objective was simple: get Canadians to see Dr. Oetker as one of their own, and add us to their next grocery list.
If the biggest barrier was recognition, we didn’t need to convince people to care about buying local. We just needed to make it unmistakably obvious that we were local too. The strategy became about cutting through the noise with something that felt proudly Canadian, instantly clear, and easy to share.
We focused on earning attention through pride and playfulness. The tone had to feel self-aware, the kind of Canadian humour that sparks conversation, not just a label change. Our target was Canadians 25 to 49 who want to shop local, but don’t want to be lectured about it.
To address the confusion Canadians were feeling in the grocery store, we launched a campaign to help shoppers find Dr. Oetker’s Canadian Made frozen pizzas with a pronunciation PSA, or as we called it, PS”EH”. We took the Italian sounding products and gave them a little Canadian flourish on the end. Ristorante became "Ris ᐧ Toh ᐧ Ron ᐧ T ᐧ EH, Giuseppe to "Ge ᐧ Se ᐧ P ᐧ EH”, and Casa di Mama was now pronounced "Ca ᐧ Sa ᐧ Dee ᐧ Ma ᐧ M ᐧ EH."
We designed stickers spotlighting the patriotic pronunciation which showed up in stores, on the streets, and on social media. In our humorous heist-inspired hero video, a pizza patriot hijacks a grocery PA system and races through the store stickering Dr. Oetker boxes to let shoppers know their favourite pizzas are made in Canada. (He apologizes for the interruption, of course – he is Canadian after all!)
It was important to promote our patriotic pronunciation across diverse channels to reach different demographics. On Tiktok and Instagram, we tailored the creative for a lo-fi feel with an arresting hook in the first 3 seconds: our hero hijacking the PA system. We partnered with relatable Canadian content creators to share our message through voices our audience already trusted. We placed a billboard featuring the "Ris ᐧ Toh ᐧ Ron ᐧ T ᐧ EH” phonetic spelling (and our highly visible EH sticker) at a high traffic Toronto intersection one block from a major grocery store. The sticker in stores reached shoppers right at that decision-making moment and became a symbol of our commitment: we’re not just asking Canadians to stick with us, we’re promising to stick with them, with Canadian workers, Canadian ingredients, and Canadian-made.
This campaign exceeded our goals across awareness, engagement, and sentiment. We hit 102M total impressions across Instagram and TikTok and generated 2.4M total engagements, with influencer content alone driving 3.8M views and over 14K interactions.
Engagement was strong across the board. Organic content delivered a 3.8% engagement rate, while influencer content (paid and organic) averaged 8.6%, helping us build real 1:1 conversations with our community. Paid media performed efficiently, with a 4.97% IG engagement rate and 14.3% TikTok view-through rate.
The campaign also delivered significant brand lift. We saw a +22.5pt increase in ad recall on TikTok, a +6pt lift on Meta, and a +5.4pt increase in action intent. Importantly, there was an 11.3pt lift in brand association with being Canadian Made, and a 12pt increase in keyword association, proving the message landed exactly where it needed to. Not bad, eh?
