In 2014, NBA legend Shaquille O’Neal mentioned that he would love to do something with Kraft Dinner. We saw a fantastic opportunity to start a conversation with Shaq and extend our campaign messaging in an authentic and engaging way.

The only challenge was figuring out what could we do that get his attention and get him talking about our campaign through social media.

So we played to his ego.

We created a limited-edition box of Shaq Dinner, completely Shaq-ified from the name to the cooking instructions. We even had custom noodles in the forms of the letters S,H,A,Q so that he could spell his name to his heart’s content.

Then we sent it to him.

Did Shaq like it? No: He loved it, posting photos of “Shaq Dinner” to his over 13 millions fans on Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter. Within one day our post got over 25,000 likes on Instagram, over 10,000 likes on Facebook, and over 850 shares.

And all it cost us was a single box of Kraft Dinner.

Kraft Dinner is an inherently fun brand. It takes us back to a simpler time when having fun was an end in itself. But as we got older, fun things were pushed aside for more adult responsibilities. Kraft Dinner believes that fun is still inside all of us, and that we just need an excuse to let it out

Step 1 – Design and manufacture a ton of fun Kraft Dinner products.

Step 2 – Open KD Fun Shops across Canada.

Step 3 – Turn fun into a currency.

Step 4 – Watch adults across the country line up to have fun like they were kids again.

Step 5 – High-five each other for creating a positive attitude towards Kraft Dinner among our adult consumers.

For the first time in a long time, adults actually wanted Kraft Dinner.

In just nine days, we sold over 5,000 custom made Kraft Dinner items, which means that adults had to let their fun out and complete 5,000 fun challenges. We also sold over $9,000 worth of everyday goods and services paid for with fun. This resulted in a positive change in attitude towards the brand as well as lots of social chatter, and Canada’s largest news agency even covered “fun as a currency” in their business section.