From an early age, it’s clear that kids are naturally attracted to cooking and Uncle Ben’s wants to invite kids into the kitchen.
The Drum - “US Creative Work of the Week”
The Story Behind The Work:
For several years, Uncle Ben’s promoted Ben’s Beginners, an initiative to get parents cooking with their kids to support healthier meals. Following its US success, Uncle Ben’s decided to take the campaign international with a big, anthemic spot to run in the US, Canada, UK, France, Germany, Spain, Italy, Poland, Japan, South Korea and a whole host of other countries.
The problem, of course, is that each country has their own language and different customs around food. And the client didn’t want to make a spot for each market, they wanted one spot for every market.
A few days after the briefing, my partner and I were grabbing lunch and during our casual convo we started talking about our own childhood memories - cooking with Easy-Bake Ovens and playing with plastic toy kitchens. Suddenly it dawned on us: We didn’t need to convince parents to get their kids cooking, kids are already cooking (or at least pretending to).
Utilizing BBDO’s global network, our account and strategy team emailed BBDO offices around the world to make sure our insight was true. Sure enough, kids across the world mimic their parents by playing with kitchen utensils, plastic toy kitchens and they all pretend to cook. Before long, we had an emotional story that tapped into a deep human truth and to the delight of Uncle Ben’s, it didn’t contain dialogue and could easily be adapted to every market with updates to the endcards.
Team: