Hellmann’s is a beloved brand: it is America’s #1 mayonnaise. But while Americans love Hellmann’s for its creamy, rich taste, it doesn’t come to mind as a “go to” ingredient for a variety of dishes.

While our competitors were touting functional attributes of taste and delicious enjoyment, we set out to drive growth by focusing on broadening our usage occasions, and giving people a reason to use Hellmann’s more often.

We knew that 40% of all food is wasted in America; households buy food with the greatest of intentions, but life gets in the way and food unintentionally goes to waste.

We wanted to show America how, with a help of a little Hellmann’s, they could save food from going to waste.

The U.S wastes 80 billion pounds of food a year, with 40% happening in homes. And nothing helps save food from being wasted like a little bit of Hellmann’s., which turns leftovers into something new.

We wanted to create an inspiring idea for reducing waste – one that would resonate in culture. We needed to do more than simply make noise - we needed to inspire conversation.

But mayonnaise is not a product that makes headlines. Food waste does make headlines, but these aren’t headlines Americans want to read.

Our idea was simple, based on a product truth: "mayo tackles food waste". How we brought it to life needed to be memorable and inspiring to result in a behavior change. So, we launched our idea on the 2nd highest food waste day - Super Bowl Sunday - with a spokesperson destined to help reduce food waste, ex-NFL linesman, Jerod Mayo.

To drive growth, we needed to get Millennials to use Hellmann’s more often. While avoiding food waste was important (70% of people agreeing), Millennials waste more food than other cohorts.

After 2 years of living in a pandemic, the last thing we wanted to do was guilt people around their behaviors.

To inspire people to act, we needed to reframe the conversation. We leaned into the emotional uplift undercurrent in culture to reframe the conversation from being a food-waster to being a food-saver with Hellmann’s.

Knowing that the Super Bowl is just as much a celebration of our love of food as it is football. We wanted to own the day by celebrating all the possibilities of food and showing people how they can turn those game day left behind foods into possibilities rather than have them go to waste.

We leveraged social to generate interest and excitement for what Hellmann’s had planned for the Super Bowl. It all started with a few posts from Jerod Mayo himself such as ‘Hey Hellmann’s, I’m mayo, you’re mayo. Has a nice ring to it.” This started a conversation between Mr. Mayo and Hellmann’s, including a challenge from the brand to help tackle food waste.

This led to a number of digital and social teasers of Jerod Mayo preparing for his big day. The spot aired during a prime spot in the game. This was followed up by Hellmann’s announcing in social that every in-game tackle resulted in the brand contributing 5,000 meals for feeding America – resulting in 1 million meals in total. And following the game, we launched the Hellmann's "Fridge Night App" - a tool proven to reduce food waste in homes by 46%.

Broadcast - 131,053,000 Impressions

The campaign created nearly seven billion earned impressions and received positive press reviews in key media outlets: Yahoo! Sports gave the spot an ‘A’; The Athletic named it the #2 Super Bowl ad; People named it the best Super bowl ad; AdAge gave it four stars. On Super Bowl Sunday, we drove the highest conversion among food brands.

We created a strong association between the brand and the issue of reducing food waste while also driving consideration and creating a positive halo on the brand. Following the Super Bowl, Hellmann’s made up 7% of all food waste conversation in social and the overall social sentiment towards the brand and the spot was 96% positive. And, according to the Harris Poll, Hellmann’s saw the largest increase in ‘consideration’ (likelihood to purchase) of any Super Bowl advertiser, with a 13% increase.

Most importantly, we saw a 20% increase in net sales volume.