Uncle Ben’s® – Ben’s Beginners™

 

1. What is the observed insight?

Strained on time, parents are searching for quick meal solutions for their busy families. It means that parents are spending less time cooking with their kids, and therefore fewer kids are learning to cook. But research shows that cooking as kid with parents has a lot of benefits: it ensures kids to have healthier eating habits for a lifetime (1), better school grades(2), better quality of communication(3) and is also associated with less tension at home(4). We know parents identify the following points as barriers to cooking with their kids: time-constraints, safety, limited resources to be creative in the kitchen and having the right child-friendly tools.

 

2. The Nudge

Since 2012, the Uncle Ben’s® Ben’s Beginners™ programme encourages parents to take the time to cook with their kids to share healthier eating habits.

In 2017, we therefore hosted interactive cooking lessons and kid-friendly recipes on a major e-commerce website in France to ensure kids can safely and easily train before joining their parents in the kitchen, and helping parents to save time during their weekly shopping. Additionally, in Germany and Belgium, we gave away free kitchen stools to give children a height boost in the kitchen and encourage them to participate in the cooking experience.

This emotion-driven programme is designed to help parents involve their kids in their cooking routine, thus creating healthier habits. We have made it easy to teach children basic cooking skills with the appropriate incentives like meal-kits promotions and free kitchen stools. The families’ ego was stimulated by encouraging them to post their achievements on social networks. Framing and immediacy were taken into account to engage people at the right moment on their shopping journey.

 

3. Evidence path

In France, with 85m impressions, an average of 1min25 spent on the online lessons and 83% incremental sales, we know that people not only interacted with the lessons but also cooked with their kids.

In Germany, the campaign exceeded 112m impressions and gained retailer traction with 100% coverage (excluding discounters), enabling us to give away 95,000 kitchen stools.

 

(1) Fiese et al. (2012); Chu et al. (2013); Fink et al. (2016); Fulkerson et al. (2009)
(2) Fulkerson et al (2006)
(3) Fulkerson et al (2006)
(4) Welsh et al. (2011), Fulkerson et al. (2010)