Creating social-first, sensory storybooks for Ella's Kitchen

Ella’s Kitchen was on a mission to improve children’s lives by developing a healthy relationship with food. This involved flipping the adage, “Don’t play with your food” through their campaign, Eat. Play. Love. Research showed that sensory food play leads to an increase in willingness for little ones to try, and subsequently, fall in love, with fruit and veg. "Play" was an important message that we needed to share with parents and carers, however, unrealistic social content often adds to the pressure of parenting. We needed an approach that playfully reached, and not preached, to parents.

Within Instagram Stories, we created a series of social-first sensory storybooks to enhance the sacred story time moment between a parent and child and translated it into a playful mealtime moment. Our audience was able to follow the adventures of “The Carrot That Could,” “The Banana That Became Brave,” and “The Broccoli Who Wondered Who To Be” whilst embracing the joys of sensory food play. As parents follow our narrated story, sensory food cues encourage little ones to play with their food, sparking their senses (and imagination) to encourage a healthier, happier relationship with fruit and vegetables.

Eat.Play.Love.and our Food Time Stories helped Ella’s Kitchen shift the perception that it is wrong to play with your food, the North Star of our campaign. There was a 12% increase in the perception that Ella’s Kitchen makes eating more fun; 88% of respondents said the content made them feel that the brand encourages their baby to develop a healthy relationship with food; and 84% of respondents agreed Ella’s Kitchen is a brand that helps little people love food. Not only this, but "The Carrot That Could” was so successful that it became a printed children’s book. The campaign also won Best Use of Instagram at the UK Social Media Awards and helped Goodstuff take the media account from Havas Media without a pitch.