Unilever’s Becel mines the emotions in new Mullen Lowe ‘Baking With Heart’ online series

We’re all bake off barmy these days following the worldwide success of the hit BBC show but Unilever brand Becel (Flora in the UK) and agency Mullen Lowe are mining the baking seam in an unexpected and rather dramatic way here.

Mullen Lowe London has created an online series for Becel, ‘Baking with Heart,’ and the first film, ‘Thank You Jean’ for Becel Canada, shows former Buckingham Palace nanny Jean Rowcliffe, a Canadian, who has dedicated her life to helping people cope with bereavement following the death of her only son. Her current charges, a young British family, bake her a cake to say thank you.

Unilever Canada senior brand building manager – spreads Valerie Rousseau says: “For the last 30 years or so, we have really focused on functional heart health for Becel, focusing around heart-healthy eating and heart-healthy lifestyles. Now, we’re making a shift towards the emotional side of the brand; living life with heart, baking with heart and cooking with heart.”

Aren’t they just. Unilever has pioneered this ‘here for good’ stuff (as Mullen Lowe’s Tom Knox calls it) for Dove and some other brands. Now everybody seems to be doing it (Procter & Gamble with Always) and you do wonder how far it can usefully go.

But the agency and director Peter King from Outsider pull it off this time.

MAA creative scale: 7.