Hellmann’s is in the fridges of almost half of the homes in the United States. But, it often is just sitting there, being overlooked and underutilized. Hellmann’s only comes to mind when making a sandwich. We needed to get people thinking and using Hellmann’s more often. So, we set out to make Hellmann’s top of mind by getting Americans to see that their leftovers can go further with one scoop of Hellmann’s mayo.

Mayo. The creamiest and most boring of condiments. On average, people think about mayo zero times a day. So, how do you get people who never think about mayo to think about mayo a lot? You take something people do think about a lot (and care about a lot) and turn it into an ear-worm.

Over 25% of Americans have a cat for a pet. There are 61,000,000 cats in the U.S. On average, they meow 150 times a day. What if every time a cat meowed you thought of mayo? That’s over 91 billion opportunities to get people thinking about mayo. Enter, Mayo Cat: the cat whose meow gets mayo stuck in your head—and forever changes the way you hear your pets

Our core focus was to grow among Millennial Mayonnaise Users (aged 27- 43). They were consumers of mayonnaise, but they were not purchasing (and using) Hellmann’s at the same rate as competitors.

Millennials didn’t think a lot about Hellmann’s but they do think a lot about wasting food.While 80% of Millennials say they are trying to minimize waste in their homes, they are ironically wasting more food than other age groups.

We decided to tap into their conscious mindset to show them how Hellmann’s can be an ingredient to help use up their leftovers, ultimately reducing their waste.

To achieve Mayo Cat’s full potential, we put audio at the heart of everything we did. That meant we needed a lot of “mayo-ing.” Mayo-ing in our big Super Bowl spot. Mayo-ing on the big Las Vegas Sphere. Mayo-ing in every tiny corner of social media. Mayo-ing wherever human ears might be.

Meanwhile, we were flooding social media with “mayos” and Mayo Cat content that the people all over the Internet (including unpaid celebs) were recreating with their own cats. We engaged people with MayoMeter—a commerce experience that generates an instant offer based on how much your cat’s meow sounds like "mayo."

America fell in love with Mayo Cat, positively impacting the brand and business:

8 consecutive weeks of sales growth vs year ago (when brand also had a Super Bowl campaign)

+2 share gain

Earned 30.5 Billion impressions, across 4040 media placements

97% positive brand sentiment in earned media

The campaign’s greatest feat?

Well, Fast Company said it best, “Hellmann’s new Super Bowl ad will forever change what you hear when cats meow.” Or is it “mayo”?