A century has passed since Richard Hellmann introduced Hellmann’s mayonnaise and created a very crowded global mayonnaise category… Amidst lower-cost competitors, Hellmann’s had to find a way to rekindle interest in the brand and justify its premium price. Hellmann’s saw the once-in-a-lifetime event of celebrating one hundred years as an invaluable opportunity to seize the moment and reassert its relevance. Hellmann’s celebrated this centennial milestone by bringing food and people together through new technologies, events and traditional media. The brand procured Mario Batali to be the face of the campaign and to remake Hellmann’s recipes from the past 100 years. These recipes were shared via content digitally, socially and in-store. To thank consumers for inviting Hellmann’s to their tables over years, the brand invited their biggest fans to join them at their table to celebrate their birthday party- and partake in history with the World’s longest picnic table.

The campaign launched by announcing Mario Batali, one of America’s favorite chefs, as the face of a fully integrated campaign that included the web series 'Batali & Friends', a content partnership with 'The Chew', sharing the celebration via social media, the TV ad '100 Years in 30 Seconds', and innovative in-store activation. Content was optimized by partner Mindshare and distributed in a variety of ways- through our traditional social channels of YouTube, Facebook, Instagram and Twitter, as well as digital media hosting, and partner Weber PR creating awareness of the campaign. The Brand also employed direct response communications to a database of 500,000+ consumers and a call-to-action on all traditional media including in-store video. The program culminated in a huge 100th birthday celebration event in NYC held blocks away from the site of Richard Hellmann's original deli.

The Hellmann's 100 Years program was a success both in terms of driving relevance and re-establishing brand leadership and in driving sales. The Mario Batali content drove sales at the in-store level, driving underlying sales growth by 11% in June, and 16.5% in July, far exceeding our client’s 5% target. Consumers were engaged at multiple levels, responding not only via social channels, but discussing their engagement with the broadcast integration, the in-store experience and a custom Facebook App. The App generated over 2 million story impressions and 226,000 unique users. In total, the campaign garnered over 1 billion media impressions and inspired over 3 million social interactions, double our goal. Most importantly, the recipes were downloaded millions of times, showing that families across the country have new ways to eat Real Food.