Knorr: Instant Inspiration

All moms know the feeling of staring at a few odd ingredients, and trying to decide what to cook for dinner.

Knorr’s whatsfordinner recipe portal was created to give moms quick and delicious dinner ideas. The brand is always in search of faster and simpler ways to deliver dinner inspiration, allowing moms to spend less time in the kitchen, and more time with their families. The challenge was to come up with the quickest way to get dinner on the table, yet. The campaign to get the word out about the portal was called “Instant Inspiration.”

The objective for Knorr was to build awareness of the platform, bring traffic to the site, grow engagement and drive purchase volume of Knorr products.

The core target was all meal providers – primarily mums – ages  25-49 who know how to cook and are preparing meals every day for their families. An additional target was women under 30 years who do not know how to cook. The brand had also noticed a rise in a new audience who are young and passionate about cooking as well as being passionate about their cultural heritage.

Instant Inspiration was the campaign idea. Visitors could input what they had on hand, and Knorr would tell each cook what they have for dinner. Across various platforms, users input a few ingredients that they had in their fridge and pantry. An immediate response would be received, directing the user to a recipe featuring the ingredients they provided. All the recipes suggested contained a Knorr product, driving purchase.

The campaign was rolled out across the following platforms: Twitter, Facebook, WhatsApp, the Knorr website and on feature phones, using MXit:

Twitter: The user would tweet the items she wanted to use, including the #whatsfordinner hashtag. In a matter of seconds, she would receive an automatic response, including a link to a recipe. The user could follow the link to be directed to the website where the full recipe could be viewed.

Facebook: The campaign also dished up inspiration on Facebook. Fans simply posted the ingredients of their choice to Knorr’s wall and they would immediately receive a response as a comment to their original post. The comment included a thumbnail image of the meal recommended and directed the user to the website to view the full recipe.

WhatsApp: At the time of this campaign, few brands had ventured on to WhatsApp. Knorr cooking class attendants could send their ingredients via the popular instant messaging service and in response receive a recipe along with visuals. Additionally, WhatsApp mobile functionality was integrated into live events during cooking classes, and consumers were encouraged to “WhatsApp” a provided number to receive the recipe from the class. This drove the campaign further in live events, providing recipe inspiration to our consumers.

Feature Phone: Feature phone users could also receive unlimited inspiration. On MXit, they could submit the ingredients they have and in response, receive a recipe idea. Alternatively, the user could submit multiple ingredients to a field on the mobisite to receive Instant Inspiration.

Website: The simple “ask and get” mechanism was added to the Knorr website through the Instant Inspiration tool. After submitting multiple ingredients, the user could flick through recipe suggestions and click through to the full recipe. Searching the portal’s hundreds of recipes became much easier through this innovation.

Media was broken up between standard banners, Facebook advertising and Gmail sponsorship.

This campaign had a mobile first focus, enabling consumers access to Instant Inspiration via mobile devices on platforms they already use, including WhatsApp, MXit, Twitter, Facebook and the mobisite. Mobile allowed users to access a recipe idea, whenever, wherever, whether they were in a taxi on their way home, in store, or waiting to pick up their kids from school.

The overall campaign budget for the build was R 209 608 (currency is the South African Rand) with a large portion going to developing the API functionality to allow the build to pull recipes from the overall recipe database housed by Sapient.

Here are the results of the effort:

• By sending the user a link that directs to the website, the effort drive traffic to the site and increased awareness of the platform. Overall the campaign received consumer reach of 23.9 million.
• Every R1 invested in the whatsfordinner program, delivered an R30 increase in sales.

Since the campaign was a functional build, it could be used to further activate new campaigns as well as be used at live events. The campaign was extremely successful — overall it drove traffic to the site, created awareness of the platform, and significantly increased database sign ups. This innovative functionality has secured Knorr’s position as SA’s leading recipe portal.

By: MMA Global