Unilever boosts nutrition skills in schools

Unilever has pumped £9M, its biggest marketing spend this year, behind a ‘Cooking with Schools’ campaign linked to its Flora brand to strengthen training facilities for cooking in schools.

A total of 7,000 primary schools are already signed up to the scheme, which allows shoppers to register codes on packs of Flora spreads online to contribute to cooking equipment in schools. Unilever has written to 25,000 primary schools in total.

“All the main Flora branded ranges will have promotional packs in all sizes and will be in full distribution by June 9,” said Flora brand manager Joe Comiskey. The 250g spread packs will offer 20p towards cooking equipment; 500g packs offer 50p and 1kg packs offer £1. “We have linked up with a cooking equipment supplier to get the best prices,” said Comiskey.

Unilever said using codes on packs was intended to be more convenient than collecting physical tokens. “One of the things we found from teachers’ feedback on this idea was that they didn’t want to count up the tokens,” said Comiskey.

Unilever insisted the scheme would not involve direct marketing of food and drink brands to children, as it would not mention its brands in a classroom context.

The first phase of the online voucher campaign will run until October, with online vouchers redeemable up until December 31. Unilever aims to focus on primary schools this year and to extend the promotion to secondary schools next year. The programme is timed to coincide with government plans to introduce compulsory home economics to all secondary schools in 2009.

The initiative will be backed by a roadshow visiting 100 schools in the next two months inviting children to help cook simple meals. Celebrity chef Gary Rhodes has been picked to front up the campaign. TV and national consumer press adverts in support of the scheme will run from June 9.