Knorr

The objective

Making cooking the new love language among Gen Z audiences

Knorr, Unilever’s iconic food brand, has been widely known for its packaged seasonings and recipe bases, offering a convenient way for home cooks to add flavour and confidence to everyday meals. Ahead of Valentine’s Day, Knorr wanted to translate this long-standing positioning into cultural relevance for a new generation. By tapping into a moment where Gen Z is redefining relationship norms, Knorr’s goal was to showcase that cooking with its products signals confidence, care, and modern desirability. This campaign aimed to deepen Knorr’s relevance with younger Canadians, drive awareness, and inspire action through traffic and video views.

The solution

Driving cultural connection with content that sparks conversations

To deliver on this goal and reach Gen Z at scale during Valentine’s week, Knorr launched its largest TikTok campaign to date with a platform-first strategy supported by their agencies Initiative, Kinesso and Edelman. The campaign combined multiple TikTok solutions, such as Auction In-Feed Ads, delivering reach across Canadians aged 18-34, with interests in food, dating and recipes. 

Additionally, a custom-built Instant Page provided a fast, seamless experience where audiences could explore Knorr recipes and products without leaving the app. Interactive Add-Ons were layered on top of the ads to invite participation and give the campaign a distinctive, organic feel.

Alongside paid media, Knorr worked with prominent Canadian creator @moosebendago, known for his upbeat street interviews, to produce a comical interview-style video series. The content featured real Gen Z Canadians talking about their “green flags” in dating, naturally positioning Knorr as part of that conversation and a gateway to a simpler love life through easy cooking. These creator-led assets were designed specifically for TikTok and used the platform’s own effects and stickers to boost engagement.

The results

Empowering Gen Z to engage and convert

Knorr’s Valentine’s Day campaign outperformed TikTok benchmarks across engagement and time spent. The campaign saw a massive boost in awareness with a reach of 1.68M and over 17M video views. Engagement was also high with audiences spending over 11 seconds exploring the Instant Page, a standout average for the CPG category. Lastly, these deep interactions also translated into action, with 9.2K custom event completions on their website, and 13% visitors moving from discovery to conversion. These results enabled the brand to gauge both awareness and downstream actions, demonstrating how each element contributed to the overall performance.

By leaning into a bold creator partnership, TikTok-first storytelling, and innovative add-ons, Knorr cracked the Gen Z code, turning culinary confidence the new currency in dating. The brand proved that when you engage with culture through purpose and creativity, you don’t just spice up the conversation, you lead it. Literally.