• by Emily Burg , May 4, 2007

Ogilvy North America is launching a new campaign for Unilever's Hellmann's Real Mayonnaise brand, called the "Real Food" campaign. Doug Scott, executive director for branded content, Ogilvy North America, discussed the campaign at this week's AlwaysOn OnHollywood Conference in Los Angeles.

Comparing it to Dove's "Real Beauty" campaign, Scott said the idea for "Real Food" was derived both from the Hellmann's brand name and people's different connotations of what real food means. "To some, it's organic; to others it's healthy; to some it's a recipe handed down from generation to generation," Scott explained.

The Hellmann's Web site at mayo.com builds on that, with its landing page featuring a checkerboard of clickable faces of real Hellmann's consumers--all of whom have submitted their recipes featuring Hellmann's mayonnaise, above the proclamation: "It's time for real." The site also contains pages that challenge traditional ideas about mayonnaise's health content, or lack thereof, declaring it a good source of Omega-3s and featuring recipe ideas from Oprah's diet guru Bob Greene.

The new ad campaign will extend the interactive component of these real stories and recipes, Scott said, through partnerships with Yahoo's food page and with Wal-Mart. Recipes will appear on http://food.yahoo.com, and representatives will be in aisles of Wal-Mart stores to collect and trade recipes with shoppers.

Also, Scott said, people will travel around the country to promote the Hellmann's brand, and recipes that feature it, which "really elevates the conversation, as well at drills it down to the local level."

Scott did not reveal when the campaign will be launched, nor how much will be spent on it--although according to Nielsen Monitor-Plus, Hellmann's spent $27.7 million on advertising in 2006. Unilever did not respond at press time to a request for more details about the campaign.

Scott participated in a broader conversation at the OnHollywood conference about challenges to traditional advertising models. He spoke to the question of engaging consumers and brands, and discussed the challenges of entertaining and audience while also giving context to a product and creating a dialogue about it. One solution he mentioned was lifestyle marketing, of which the new Hellmann's campaign is an example.