We created the Dolmio Pepper Hacker. The pepper cracker that turns tech off and family dinnertimes on.

Built from the ground up, the Pepper Hacker features hidden custom software that mimicks the household WiFi network. This tricks mobile devices within the home to disconnect from the WiFi network and connect to the Pepper Hacker’s in-built WiFi chip, blocking all outgoing data. A message is then served encouraging people to enjoy dinner together.

Dolmio made thousands of Pepper Hackers and gave them away via an on-pack promotion.

To win one, people had to upload a photo proving why they needed one.

A campaign site detailed the tech and allowed people to enter and an online film helped spread the word.

Designing and manufacturing the Dolmio Pepper Hacker was an 18 month process working through everything from industrial design to bespoke tech development.

Over 3000 Pepper Hackers were produced.

We then relabeled all the Dolmio products on shelf to let shoppers know that by purchasing Dolmio they were in with a chance to win one of their very own.

An online film, watched by millions, showed people why they needed a Pepper Hacker and we primed shoppers with OOH in proximity to retailers with a reminder that they could win a Pepper Hacker with Dolmio.

We’d wanted to inject excitement and passion back into Dolmio:

The ambition was to achieve earned reach of 5,000,000 Australians.

We reached 12,845,000 Australians, 156% above target.

We wanted fame for the brand:

The campaign generated 269 pieces of PR coverage globally, including Good Morning America, watched by 4.4 million daily.

We wanted to recover lost penetration from 2015:

We achieved that and more, actually growing by 0.6%. An extra 144,000 purchasing Dolmio.

Our goal was to grow value sales by 3% vs Year Ago:

They grew by +7.1%.

And finally we needed to grow the brand’s value share by 1%.

It grew +1.8% vs a year ago.

Not bad for the market leader in a category bleeding red.

This is a promotional campaign that gave away a promotional product.

Dolmio believes nothing beats the conviviality, fun and laughter of getting the family around the table for an Italian meal everyone loves. It’s messy, it’s noisy and what life is all about. Dolmio’s purpose is to ‘be the spark that brings families together’.

However, something was getting in the way of these connected dinnertimes.

We commissioned a study into family behaviour. It revealed some explosively rich frustrations. 78% of Australian parents said technology should be banned at the table. 2 in 3 Aussie families reported ‘family disfunction’ from over-use of technology at the table.

We had our insight: phones were a parental phobia. Far from bringing us closer technology is tearing families apart at meal times.

So we needed to find a way to flip that. We needed families to disconnect to reconnect.

Dolmio is Australia’s leading pasta sauce brand, and Spaghetti Bolognese is Australia’s 5th most popular meal. So naturally, in 2016 Dolmio had good sales results, right? Not quite.

More and more, shoppers are gravitating toward more exotic meals: Indian, Asian, Mexican, and less Italian.

In 2016, competitors were driving deflation with deep discounting resulting in Dolmio losing 1.1% value share and 1.9% penetration over the last year.

Dolmio needed a shot in the arm, fast.

Our challenge was to inject excitement and passion back into Dolmio – with the ultimate goal to create fame for the brand.

We realised the world has a problem - technology has hijacked family dinnertime.

So Dolmio decided to help