Supermarkets are well known for using recipes in marketing. But usually for lasagne or meatballs. Not for clouds that smell like banana. Glow in the dark jelly. Or Vitamin C you absorb through your eyeballs.

New World is one of New Zealand’s largest supermarket chains with a purpose to inspire people with food, but with so many cooking shows and other food companies playing in the same space, it is a challenge to do so in new and surprising ways.

We focussed our attention on inspiring families through kids, by feeding their imaginations with New World’s Little Kitchen and creating an online series for children that mashed cooking with science.

And who better to inspire kids than self-proclaimed food architects Bompas and Parr. We produced eight individual webisodes where Sam and Harry did all sorts of weird, wonderful and sometimes just wacky experiments. Showing kids things they could try at home.

We produced eight individual webisodes run by Sam and Harry, using paid online promo spots directing kids and parents to watch the content.

While the webisodes were live, we partnered with a range of key influencers to show how others were getting involved and endorsing play such as a launch night partnership with primetime news show parents from Seven Sharp, 12 Mummy Bloggers sharing their own experiments with their followers as well as radio DJ’s, promotional brand partners and afternoon kids shows all getting involved.

We also included Lab notes on packaging with specific instructions for unique recipes. Even schools also got involved, by using the online experiments as educational tools in the classroom.

All of this also led to parents and kids submitting their own user generated content of creations they had made at home, which we then shared on our social channels.

By reframing a promotion as a play opportunity our communication strategy turned a tired and familiar promotion into a record-breaker:

• Sales value growth of 3.6% ($14.4m) while our competitors declined (PNS -1.9%, CD -0.6%)*

• Delivered the highest share lift of all the New World mini collectibles programme

o 2015 +1% vs. 2014 +.07%, 2013 +.07%*

• Participating suppliers saw a 4.8% growth on participating products*

People got involved:

• We had over 4,214,400 minutes of content viewed

• Target views: 400,000. Vs Actual views: 887,381. That’s a lot of views in a country with only 890,000 kids.

• 1.3 million engagements on Facebook alone

• Over 240k views of UGC experiment content

• The Little Kitchen School tool kit was #1 download worldwide on iTunes U - with over 1,200 downloads by teachers.

New World’s Little Kitchen. Not your typical recipe for success

*Source: Nielsen Scan Track. Based on PP 6 weeks to we 4/8/2015