The Background
HelloFresh entered 2025 in a mature growth phase, facing intensifying pressure within an increasingly crowded meal‑solution market. Several smaller competitors were all active in Ireland, fragmenting attention and making it harder for any brand to dominate consideration. Although HelloFresh led the food‑box category, it struggled to secure top‑of‑mind awareness (TOMA) in the midweek dinner (MWD) space, where families instinctively default to well‑established grocery and pantry options. The task was clear: build mental availability, cultural relevance, and emotional connection at the precise moments dinner decisions are made to heighten awareness. In Summer 2025, when asked: “Which meal kit/ready made meal brands do you know – even if by name only?”
1.91% cited HelloFresh for MWD-TOMA
34.3% reported TOMA
Our RTB goal was set: boost MWD TOMA to 3%, and move general TOMA up 5% points to 39.3%.
Objectives
- RESTORE THE JOY: Rebuild pride in mealtimes, reframing HelloFresh as a culturally credible choice through parent-first media moments.
- DRIVE CONSIDERATION: Reinforce the dinnertime ritual.
- REIGNITE CULTURAL RELEVANCE: Assert dominance in the mature growth phase by introducing Irish cultural relevance.
- CLOSE THE LOOP: Use search‑based behavioural metrics to quantify AV impact, with Google Trends as a proxy for real‑time salience and consideration.
This campaign was shortlisted for the Best Use of Innovation at the 2026 TAMI Awards
The Challenge
The strategy centred on a fundamental shift in how HelloFresh showed up in Irish homes. Rather than advertising around dinnertime, HelloFresh needed to exist inside it—embedded in the rituals that shape both midweek and weekend meal decisions. To rebuild midweek dinner top‑of‑mind awareness, HelloFresh needed to intercept the precise moments when families ask, “What will we eat tonight?”. TOMA typically precedes consideration in a linear purchase journey (funnel), and so by building an association with midweek dinners through AV, HelloFresh prompts mass mealtime re-appraisal, boosting TOMA and ultimately consideration amongst the competitive set.
Role of AV & TV
AV served as the behavioural backbone of the system, moving HelloFresh from awareness to consideration in a crowded category. The planning approach was grounded in evidence:
-positive contexts improve emotional encoding by 23%,
-relevance boosts emotional connection by 40%,
-and peak emotional intensity occurs after 2–3 exposures
(BARB/TechEdge/Thinkbox).
Achieving a ritual aligned AV strategy required proximity to culturally resonant environments with credibility, emotional warmth and habitual viewing patterns. Crucially, the brand needed two complementary anchors:
-a midweek activation aligned with the live dinner decision moment to boost midweek top‑of‑mind awareness, and
-a weekend presence to build emotional familiarity through shared family viewing, and align with the HelloFresh peak weekly order period.
Virgin Media Television delivered the weekday precision. The Six O’Clock Show emerged as the strongest midweek cultural entry point, combining live cookery, a family‑friendly tone and a perfectly timed broadcast slot aligned to the midweek dinner decision moment. A September 2025 cookery segment test activation validated this hypothesis, delivering one of the year’s strongest sales uplifts and confirming the power of live, credible cookery integration.
RTÉ provided the weekend counterpart. Sponsoring RTÉ One’s Big Big Movie placed HelloFresh inside a trusted family co‑viewing ritual where food naturally rises to the forefront. Importantly, this moment coincided with HelloFresh’s peak weekly ordering window, delivering proximity at a time of highest purchase intent and extending salience beyond weekday teatime.
On Virgin Media Television, subtle on‑set branding (a HelloFresh tea towel), three live cookery segments and a week‑long competition created ongoing familiarity and real‑world demonstration. Meanwhile, RTÉ’s Big Big Movie sponsorship anchored the weekend, providing consistent emotional reinforcement.
Through repetition, contextual alignment and editorial integration, HelloFresh did not simply buy airtime—it became woven into the rhythms of Irish mealtime culture. Run‑of‑day TV and BVOD added incremental reach, ensuring repeated, ritualised exposures across Q1. This strategy ensured HelloFresh owned both the emotional and functional dimensions of mealtime. By aligning with the nation’s most trusted rituals, the brand would rebuild mental availability, strengthen emotional resonance and re‑establish itself as the natural answer to the midweek dinner dilemma—driving consistent reappraisal and accelerating movement through the funnel.
The Strategy
Aligning Media with Mealtime
The cornerstone of the plan — and its biggest innovation — was a first‑of‑its‑kind partnership with Virgin Media Television’s teatime show – The Six O’Clock Show, placing HelloFresh directly into the nation’s weekday mealtime window. From 12 January, HelloFresh became part of the SOCS environment through:
- Three live cookery segments, with presenters preparing HelloFresh recipes step‑by‑step on air
- 5 day competition on the Six O’Clock Show – giving viewers the chance to win a years supply of HelloFresh, with 1 x 60” VT per day!
- Ten branded HelloFresh tea towels rotated on set, delivering subtle but continuous presence for three months!
- Daily top and tail 10″ sponsorship bug across 5 cookery features per week, played out across VM1, VM1+1, and VM Play live + catch-up!
The SOCS owned weekday mealtime, while our full AV sponsorship of The Big Big Movie owned the weekend, ensuring complete ritual coverage across the week.
Embedding in Culture
To deepen cultural relevance, we aligned with one of Ireland’s biggest annual shared moments: the Six Nations. Our Virgin Media Link placed HelloFresh around each Ireland match broadcast on VM, with QR codes visible pre‑ and post‑game. This worked in tandem with in‑stadium video formats at the Aviva, ensuring the brand appeared both on screen and/or person across all Ireland games — a powerful overlap of passion, culture, and togetherness.
- TV/BVOD: Built emotional resonance and delivered repeated, ritual‑aligned demonstration.
Across Q1, the campaign would deliver approximately 860 Adult 25–54 TVRs, front‑weighted to take advantage of seasonally lower CPTs and to maximise overlap with our AV partnerships and sponsorships. We would go off‑air for one week during the mid‑term break, when families fall out of routine and adult viewing becomes less efficient. The campaign would open with higher‑second lengths to encode the core message, before moving into shorter cue‑based formats later in the burst to drive efficient frequency. Overall, across Q1, the plan would target 78% reach (1+), 44% at 4+, and an OTS of 12.3, ensuring message salience. Our effective frequency target was set at 4+, reflecting the point at which we see diminishing returns beyond 40–50% reach, and aligning with best practice for promotional campaign types.
- Virgin Media Television SOCS partnership: Owned weekday dinnertime through native, credible integration. As part of the VMTV partnership, HelloFresh would activate three major cookery segments across H1 alongside a competition. A cookery segment would feature in January, February, and March — each featuring approved TV chefs preparing HelloFresh recipes live on air. These peaks would be supported by a week‑long viewer competition in April, designed to bring added energy and participation to the teatime slot. Throughout the entire partnership, a HelloFresh branded tea towel would remain permanently integrated into the Six O’Clock Show set, ensuring continuous visual presence. HelloFresh meal boxes would also be delivered directly to the studio to be embedded authentically within the kitchen environment.
- Big Big Movie sponsorship: Anchored HelloFresh to weekend family mealtime moments. To secure consistent weekend presence, HelloFresh would sponsor RTÉ One’s Big Big Movie throughout H1. As a weekend complement to our midweek teatime integration, this full TV and BVOD sponsorship would ensure HelloFresh maintains a balanced, ritual‑aligned AV presence across the full week.
- Sport & film environments: Embedded HelloFresh within key Irish cultural and family rituals. HelloFresh would activate a Virgin Media Link partnership across all Ireland Six Nations matches aired on VM. This placement would deliver high‑visibility presence around pre‑ and post‑match coverage, supported by QR‑enabled formats to drive interaction at scale.
- Radio & digital audio: Provided frequency, trust and personal endorsement through familiar voices.
- OOH: Delivered large‑scale visibility, including high‑impact Aviva Stadium video presence.
The Results
Brand Impact: Transforming Top‑of‑Mind Presence
The campaign delivered record shifts in both general and midweek‑specific top‑of‑mind awareness, outperforming targets and becoming the strongest brand‑tracking improvement across all HelloFresh markets globally.
- Midweek Dinner TOMA increased from 1.91% to 3.9%, more than doubling in six months and exceeding the 3% goal set in the annual RTB!
- General TOMA rose from 34.3% to 43.4%, a 9.1‑point uplift, surpassing the 39.3% objective and delivering the highest TOMA improvement in any measured market!
- This surge moved HelloFresh to the #2 top‑of‑mind food brand in Ireland, behind only Tesco — an exceptional outcome for a meal‑kit brand competing against heavily ingrained grocery defaults!
- These results directly support Objective 1 (Restore the Joy) and Objective 3 (Reignite Cultural Relevance), proving that appearing in trusted Irish cultural moments rebuilt emotional connection and mental availability!
Media Impact: AV That Drove Behaviour
The campaign delivered strongly across January 1st–February 28th with high‑quality delivery in Adults 25–54 at the moments that mattered most:
- 644 run‑of‑day Linear TVRs with 62% 1+!
- 14 average weekly TVRs and 24% 1+ across The Big Big Movie!
- 32 programme TVRs and 25% 1+ delivered on The Six O’Clock Show, reaching 481,000 Adults aged 25-54 in the first phase of the partnership!
- VM Link activity around the Six Nations on VMTV achieved an average of 17 TVRs per match with 33% 1+!
- 527,294 run of site BVOD Impressions, boosting reach!
Combined Six O’Clock Show integrations, movie sponsorship, and matchday AV created a consistent rhythm of high‑attention exposures aligned with dinner routines.
These results fulfil Objective 2 (Drive Consideration), ensuring repeated emotional reinforcement across the week.
Behavioural Impact: Search as a Proxy for Consideration
Because HelloFresh operates in a mature growth phase, awareness — which ladders directly into consideration — is the battleground. In this context, Google search interest acts as a high‑intent behavioural metric, showing when consumers are actively weighing HelloFresh in real time.
Using z‑score normalisation, we compared weekly search interest with total linear TV activity. The analysis revealed:
- TV exposure and consumer search moved closely together throughout the campaign, demonstrated by a strong correlation (Pearson r = 0.69) and nearly half of search variation explained by TV activity (R² = 47%). With a highly significant p‑value of 0.009, this relationship is proven to be real rather than coincidental. Put simply, when TV activity rose, search interest followed in tandem!
- Weeks with AV spikes (Big Big Movie stings, Six O’Clock Show cookery segments, Six Nations activations) directly coincided with surges in search intent.
- This alignment shows that HelloFresh was entering the mental shortlist at the exact dinner‑decision moment, validating the campaign’s behavioural strategy.
- Crucially, these behavioural uplifts occurred without major changes in promotions or distribution changes, isolating media — particularly AV — as the primary driver. This directly fulfils Objective 4.
“We believe the performance of our latest TV-focused media strategy has been very strong. The innovative integration of our Six O’Clock Show Partnership, Big Big Movie Sponsorship, and the Six Nations VM Link, cohesively supported by the Aviva in-stadium ad, has delivered exceptional results so far. This collective effort proves that creative non-spot TV usage is a powerful driver for our brand in the Irish market.
Most importantly, the campaign achieved a 2%-point lift in our Top of Mind Awareness (TOMA) for midweek dinners in January 2026. This is a significant result, positioning us as the second-highest brand in Ireland after Tesco—a major milestone and a direct result of our brand-building efforts.
Furthermore, we saw a massive 23% week-on-week uplift in website traffic following the Six O’Clock Show segment in February, and the campaign was a direct factor in achieving our second-highest box sales to date after the September 2025 cookery segment. This campaign has been a success, demonstrating a clear and impressive return on investment and showing that we are successfully bringing dinnertime back to the Irish people.”
Credits
Brand:
Hello Fresh
Media Agency:
Initiative
Supporting agencies/teams:
Virgin Media TV
Award:
TAMI Awards Shortlist of Best Use of Innovation at the 2026 TAMI Awards