Knorr Peel Back Gaming's Veggie Imbalance, Rooting for Virtual Greens

Created by MullenLowe, the campaign challenges top gaming publishers to give vegetables their due in popular video games

By creative salon

14 March 2024

MullenLowe has partnered with global food brand Knorr to reveal to top gaming publishers a little-known imbalance found in a multitude of their games. The campaign presents a collaborative effort from the Integrated Agency Team led by MullenLowe with insights and Mods developed by The Invaders, Influencer partnerships with Ninja and other global streamers by ITB, PR handled by Weber Shandwick and media by Mindshare.

Have you ever noticed that veg, the champions of powering-up in real life nutrition, are being seriously undervalued in top video games played by millions of people globally?

With a passion for supercharging veg in the real world, global food brand Knorr investigated just how much veg are lagging in the virtual world. In Fortnite munching meat gives a +15HP boost while chomping on cabbage delivers just +10HP. In the pixelated world of Minecraft meat will refill four hunger bars, compared to a measly two bars for a carrot. Even in the epic battlegrounds of World of Warcraft a big beef steak brings +552HP while a hearty bean stew lies in its wake, only patching up to the tune of +61HP.

The agency team and Knorr think it’s high time veg are powered up to get the recognition they deserve, and they are calling on the gaming community worldwide to join this ambition! Gaming fans are being invited to sign the petition to show their support for giving veg a boost in the virtual world and bring a new balance to gaming sustenance. The hope is this campaign will catch the attention of gaming publishers and spur them on to re-evaluate their games and give veg the supercharge they deserve.

Knorr is striking up partnerships with the modding community to create veg-powered mods for gaming juggernauts Fortnite, Minecraft, Skyrim and GTA V. Get ready to embark on a culinary quest, immerse yourself in a veg-powered adventure which sees the virtual world transformed into a playground of flavour.

In an epic unveiling, Knorr presented a launch stream on Twitch with Ninja the world's #1 biggest streamer. He brought the issue to his 19M Twitch followers, championing veg equality and playing some of the veg specific Fortnite mods.

Get involved and join forces with Knorr as they embark on their quest to even things out for veg to make vegetables the MVP (most valuable produce) in your inventory. This is not just a mission, it’s a gaming revolution to right a great wrong against veggies. To get involved play the mods and sign the petition calling on gaming publishers to make vegetables as exciting and rewarding as other foods in their games!

Calos Rodriguez, Executive Creative Director at MullenLowe says: “In helping Knorr make good food irresistible, we found that “veggies” are often underrated versus other types of food. When we saw that this reality was also true in video games, we knew we had to do something about it. Modding video games was a cool and funny way to start solving the issue, call out the big game publishers for change, and connect with a younger audience.

Niek de Rooij, Knorr Global Masterbrand Director says: “We’re thrilled to team up with Ninja in highlighting this imbalance for veg in top games worldwide. We had no idea this was so widespread and bet that gaming publishers haven’t noticed either! This campaign is about getting veg super-charged as much in the virtual world as they are in the real world.”