Hellmann’s purpose is to champion real food and believes that real food is too precious to waste. To tackle food waste in a meaningful way, Hellmann’s challenge was to reinforce our commitment to reducing food waste with millennials – a group that wastes the most food. However, millennials didn’t care about food waste. Abundant, convenient availability of food has resulted in this generation seeing food as disposable and less valuable, increasing their apathy towards food waste.

We created 3 Animal Crossing Island experiences from August – December 2020 with a total budget of about $600k across production and media.

For years, Hellmann’s has been championing the Real Food Movement with the belief that “real food is too precious to waste”. In 2020, Hellmann’s needed to get young people, who often overlook food waste, to engage in this issue.

In lockdown, millennials became obsessed with Animal Crossing: New Horizons. Players were deeply engaged in the game. Animal Crossing had a built-in food waste problem – a perfect opportunity for Hellmann’s. It seemed like our audience cared about virtual food waste more than they did about real food waste.

To highlight the virtual food waste that was occurring right in front of them, we created a virtual food drive on Animal Crossing. We created an Animal Crossing Island and invited our audience to bring us their food waste. For every spoiled item dropped off, Hellmann’s donated a real meal to a food bank, turning virtual food waste into real impact.

Millennials are a significant opportunity for Hellmann’s, but food waste isn’t a top-of-mind issue for them. Yet, they waste the most amount of food than any cohort. To continue Hellmann’s fight against food waste, we needed the support of the group that creates the most food waste. In 2020, we decided to laser focus on this audience.

During lockdowns, Animal Crossing emerged as millennials’ new obsession. We chose this platform not only because of its engaged millennial audience, but because we realized it had a built-in food waste problem. Plus, players of the game were deeply engaged in the game, always looking for new experiences and enthusiastic about brand integrations.

By choosing this platform, not only were we able to successfully drive awareness, but we also managed to get millennials interested in food waste enough to actually engage in it and have conversations about it.

To design the island, we commissioned a designer who was an Animal Crossing enthusiast with 1,000 hours of experience designing islands. She built a complete Hellmann’s branded island complete with the Hellmann’s colours, font and logos.

Every feature of the island was purposefully designed. The first thing visitors saw was “Ribbon Island”, an island shaped exactly like the Hellmann’s ribbon. Visitors were then directed to drop off their food waste and tour the island.

A fresh food farm gave a nod to Hellmann’s commitment to real food. We highlighted most-wasted foods by creating custom in-game merch that came with a food waste tip. The island was rated 5-stars, a coveted rating, showing our dedication when it came to the game.

The island was designed, then redesigned for Halloween and Christmas. The campaign targeted Canadians but as an online event attracted people from beyond Canada as well.

We reached millennials and got them to care about food waste through an experience that delighted them.

• 66.1M total impressions, 54.8M total reach, 6.8M total engagements and an engagement rate of 46.7%

• 5,000 direct messages requesting tours every 5 days, with 1,100 arriving within the first 10 minutes

• 15,000 people mentioned Hellmann’s, sharing their gameplay

• 84% of attendees said the Hellmann’s Island experience motivated them to reduce food waste in their own homes.

• Surpassed our goal of 25,000 meals and donated 100,000 real meals to foodbanks.

• Business experienced a significant impact: penetration increased 109 bps to 51.2% and underlying sales growth in 2020 was 4x that of 2019.

• Hellmann’s reinforced its position as the brand that “helps to use food that otherwise would go to waste”, increasing by 7 points since 2019.