Canadian Lentils (now lentils.org) is a brand funded by the Saskatchewan Pulse Growers with the mission to Nourish the World Through Profitable Pulse Production.
In 2015, Canadian Lentils wanted to create an awareness campaign to help boost the popularity of lentils and show how fun, versatile and delicious a lentil dish could be. We accepted the challenge.
Create a campaign that not only created awareness about lentils as a nutritious food, but also educated consumers on how to cook them and use them in many delicious recipes.
The Fun-de-Lentil Tour was created. Seven cities across Canada were chosen and a selection of 24 restaurants participated in spreading some lentil love. Top chefs created dishes, all inspired by lentils.
They showed just how easy it is to cook with them, how delicious they can be and how nutritious they really are. Foodies were out enjoying them all through the month of June and voting on their favourite dishes.
To help support the Fun-de-Lentil Tour, we developed a creative marketing strategy that engaged foodies throughout the campaign. All the foodies had to do was eat, vote, win! We built a digital footprint to bring lentils to the forefront of foodies across Canada. With that, a comprehensive digital platform was developed to give online access to information and incentivized foodies to take pictures of their favourite dishes, add designated hashtags and share the lentil love on their preferred social platforms.
Participating restaurants were also incentivized by the contest, and were provided with toolkits that promoted the campaign including everything from coasters to posters. With the proper support in place, social media was amplified with multiple daily hits on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram. Exclusive online media exposure on leading digital platforms was covered by food and drink sections across Canada, including the National Post and Gastropost.
In the end, exciting dishes were savoured, restaurants competed for votes and the love for lentils spread quickly throughout this great nation. In a single month, the Fun-de-Lentil Tour resulted in:
The campaign also built awareness and set the stage for subsequent contests, social activity and user-generated content. We developed an audience, a channel and created an abundance of content that lives on through social and online avenues.
“A great experience. We took a product so little, yet so mighty and created a fun, high energy campaign around it. Creative and media license from a client that wanted to create noise was a match made in lentil heaven for us. Watching its success in real time was fascinating, seeing foodies write reviews and comments about their experiences allowed us to become so close to the consumers and finally, looking at the impressions and the digital footprint we created was our reward.
Yes, my personal lentil consumption has increased substantially since working on this campaign, and yes, my friends had to hear all about it.” – Mazen Tannir, Media Planner/Buyer
