The mayonnaise brand’s latest campaign petitions emoji makers to add mayo to the sandwich icon. The larger aim is to insert the brand in culture in relevant ways, Unilever’s Senior Marketing Director says.
Hellmann’s mayonnaise is trying to get consumers talking about the sandwich emoji. The goal is to inspire change by spurring consumers to sign a petition for keyboards’ sandwich emojis to be updated with mayonnaise on them.
“The strategy behind the campaign is all about showing up in culture and creating a conversation, especially on topics or in ways that are aligned to our Hellmann’s brand voice and our kind of fun, playful personality,” said Brent Lukowski, Senior Marketing Director at Unilever, which owns Hellmann’s.
But to do that, consumers have to talk about putting mayonnaise on their sandwiches. Hellmann’s hired 11 influencers to post about mayo on sandwiches and a plug to sign the petition.
The target audience for this campaign is broad, but fits into two cohorts: moms with kids and at-home sandwich enthusiasts. For Hellmann’s’ social content, it’s targeting those audiences by looking at which brands and influencers consumers follow and which content they comment on or share.
So far, the brand is happy with the engagement and impressions its received on these posts, Lukowski said, without sharing specific benchmarks.
“We’re seeing a ton of chatter online, both in our organic content as well as the creators that we’ve partnered with,” Lukowski said. “The tone of voice has all been playful and tongue in cheek. It’s helped achieve the objective of Hellmann’s showing up in authentic and culturally relevant ways.”
Earned media is another arm to the campaign strategy, as the brand aims to generate as much content as possible around the sandwich emoji. Hellmann’s visited media companies Bustle Digital Group and PureWow to alert those editors about the campaign.
The Sandwich Emoji Petition
About a month into the emoji campaign, the petition, which it listed on Change.org, has about 270 signatures. It does not have a target number of signatures, Lukowski said. Once Hellmann’s feels it has “significant mobilized support” it will take the petition to Unicode Consortium, which is a nonprofit group that standardizes code printing for characters in every language.
“It’s partly to drive conversation and engagement, especially in social channels, but ultimately we would see success of this campaign culminating in literally changing the dry sandwich emoji that everyone is forced to use when they’re typing today,” Lukowski said.
Lukowski does not know how many people use the sandwich emoji, but he’s confident consumers use it considering “millions of Americans” have a sandwich for lunch every day.
Hellmann’s is not doing anything with the data from consumers who signed the petition, as the goal of the campaign was not about first party data cultivation, he said.
Hellmann’s Shows Up in Culture
The sandwich emoji petition is part of Hellmann’s larger marketing strategy of inserting itself into culture, Lukwoski said. Another example is when it worked with author Jennifer L. Armentrout on the release of her vampire book “The Primal of Blood and Bone.” Hellmann’s created a limited-edition garlic-scented mayonnaise, marketing it as “craven proof,” to stave off any vampires.
Hellmann’s also created a limited-edition fashion line of denim pants, jackets and hats for the football season. It worked with designer Zero Waste Daniel to create the collection in the “Hellmann’s cream mayo” color.
“This insight was all about the intersection of football and fashion and the faux pas that you’re not allowed to wear white after Labor Day,” he said.
This marketing initiative had more operational complexity, as it had to design and manufacture a clothing line. Plus, it has to ship the products directly to consumers, which is different and often more expensive than shipping products en masse to a retail store.
But again, it was a marketing play, and not about how many clothes it sold, (which Hellmann’s did, Lukwoski said.) The main key performance indicator was keeping Hellmann’s top-of-mind for football fans.
“Knowing that that’s a core part of our strategy — to continue furthering Hellmann’s role in football culture — it felt like a very worthwhile investment despite some of those operational complexities,” he said. “We knew that those cohorts who were passionate about football and would latch onto that insight that we identified would be excited to engage.”
