Ella's Kitchen Turns Mealtime Into a Sensory Playground
The 'Eat. Play. Love.' campaign by Ella's Kitchen challenges the age-old mealtime rule by arguing that sensory play with food builds lasting curiosity, confidence, and love of eating in young children, delivering that message through an experiential film released in the United Kingdom in January 2022.
Ella's Kitchen launched 'Eat. Play. Love.' on 17 January 2022, marking the brand's first major brand campaign since 2018, according to Creative Salon. Created by Havas London and produced in partnership with Great Guns, the campaign centred on an advertising film directed by Ben Brand that featured approximately twenty young children interacting with an edible installation. That installation spelled out the phrase 'DON'T PLAY WITH FOOD' before the children gleefully dismantled and consumed it, transforming the message into 'DO PLAY WITH FOOD', as reported by LBBOnline. The campaign carried the hashtag #EatPlayLove and invited parents across the UK to explore sensory play activities, food-based games, and weaning recipes through a dedicated hub at ellaskitchen.co.uk/eat-play-love. Rather than functioning purely as a broadcast advertisement, the campaign combined the film with educational content, sensory-play guidance, and an advocacy effort designed to shift parental attitudes toward messier, more exploratory mealtimes. The film was distributed via Good-Loop, a purpose-led advertising platform, and ran across video-on-demand and social media channels in the United Kingdom. Clapboard rates the campaign 70 out of 100, recognising its creative clarity, strong brand alignment, and culturally resonant central idea, while noting that its reach was concentrated within a single medium format.
Ella's Kitchen built 'Eat. Play. Love.' on a single, evidence-backed consumer insight: children learn through play, and mealtime should be no exception.
The strategic foundation of the campaign rested on a tension that Havas London identified within UK parenting culture. Despite growing awareness of child-led weaning and sensory development, the directive 'don't play with your food' remained a stubborn household norm. According to Creative Salon's coverage of the campaign, the creative team treated this cultural prohibition as the central creative obstacle to overcome, positioning Ella's Kitchen not merely as a food brand but as an advocate for a fundamentally different approach to how children in the United Kingdom experience eating. The brand's own positioning, established since its founding by Paul Lindley in 2006 after he found existing baby food 'beige, bland and boring' according to MediaPost, made it a credible voice for this argument. Executive Strategy Director Britt Iversen and Senior Strategist Kerrie Boyes at Havas London shaped the strategic framework, as documented by LBBOnline, ensuring the campaign spoke directly to parents navigating the weaning stage and early food introduction. In the competitive UK baby and toddler food market, Ella's Kitchen operates alongside significant rivals. Nestlé holds an estimated leadership position in the broader global baby-food category, according to GM Insights, while Danone maintains strong European market presence, according to Reports and Data. Within the United Kingdom specifically, Ella's Kitchen had earned the position of the country's number-one baby-food brand by 2012, according to LBBOnline, giving the brand the authority to lead a cultural conversation rather than simply compete on product attributes. The campaign's sensory-play framework, its digital content hub, and its use of the #EatPlayLove hashtag collectively extended the strategy beyond advertising into behaviour change, encouraging UK parents to actively participate rather than passively receive a brand message.
Director Ben Brand brought the 'Eat. Play. Love.' concept to life through a single, visually arresting device: an edible typographic installation that approximately twenty young children were invited to explore, touch, and eat on camera.
The film's creative logic was elegant in its simplicity. Havas London creatives Chico Barrera and Diogo Abrantes conceived a scenario in which the prohibition itself became the set, as reported by LBBOnline. The words 'DON'T PLAY WITH FOOD', constructed from edible materials, stood at the centre of the frame while children interacted with them freely, their natural curiosity doing the creative work. By the film's conclusion, the word 'DON'T' had been consumed and dismantled, leaving only the affirmative instruction. Mark Whelan, Group Chief Creative Officer at Havas UK, oversaw the creative output, with production managed jointly by Havas Studios and Great Guns, as documented by LBBOnline and Creative Salon. Executive Producers Flo Clive and Kojo Abban, alongside Producer Rosa Junkovic, shepherded the production, according to Creative Salon. The film's casting of real toddlers rather than older children or adult actors was a deliberate craft decision: it ensured the reactions were genuine, unscripted, and immediately legible to parents of young children in the United Kingdom. The sensory richness of the footage — children smearing, squeezing, tasting, and laughing — functioned as both entertainment and demonstration, illustrating the campaign's thesis through direct visual evidence rather than assertion. Agency film producers Sophie Honour and Charlotte Lonngren, alongside digital producer Evie Ungemuth, managed the campaign's extension across social and digital channels, as documented by LBBOnline, ensuring the film's tone carried consistently into the sensory-play content hosted on the Ella's Kitchen website.
The 'Eat. Play. Love.' campaign generated documented audience engagement and provoked measurable cultural commentary within the United Kingdom following its January 2022 launch.
The campaign film accumulated 9,393 views and 35 likes on its primary platform asset, as recorded by Clapboard's archive. While these figures reflect a focused distribution strategy rather than mass-reach media buying, they are consistent with a campaign designed to reach a specific audience of parents with young children in the UK rather than a broad demographic. The campaign was distributed via Good-Loop, a purpose-led advertising platform, which directs a portion of advertising revenue toward charitable causes, adding a layer of values-aligned media placement that reinforced the brand's advocacy positioning, according to Creative Salon. No independently verified sales uplift, brand tracking movement, or media-reach figures for the campaign are publicly available beyond these documented data points. What the campaign's structure does demonstrate is a coherent model for experiential brand communication: a single, high-craft film anchored to a digital content ecosystem, deployed through purpose-aligned media. The editorial response in the United Kingdom trade press was positive, with Creative Salon describing the work on 17 January 2022 as a deliberate and culturally grounded rejection of the 'don't play with your food' norm, according to Creative Salon. The campaign also marked a significant moment in Ella's Kitchen's brand history, representing its first major brand-level advertising investment since 2018, according to Creative Salon, signalling a renewed commitment to above-the-line communication. Clapboard rates 'Eat. Play. Love.' 70 out of 100, reflecting strong creative coherence and genuine cultural insight, with scope to have extended the campaign's measurable impact through broader media investment.
The 'Eat. Play. Love.' campaign is a 2022 experiential advertising campaign by Ella's Kitchen, created by Havas London and Great Guns and directed by Ben Brand. It argues that allowing children to play with food during mealtimes builds confidence and curiosity, challenging the conventional parenting rule against doing so in the United Kingdom.
Ben Brand directed the 'Eat. Play. Love.' film for Ella's Kitchen. The production was a collaboration between Havas Studios and Great Guns, with creative direction from Havas London creatives Chico Barrera and Diogo Abrantes, under Group Chief Creative Officer Mark Whelan, as documented by LBBOnline and Creative Salon.
Ella's Kitchen launched the 'Eat. Play. Love.' campaign on 17 January 2022 in the United Kingdom. According to Creative Salon, it was the brand's first major brand-level campaign since 2018, distributed across video-on-demand and social media channels via Good-Loop, a purpose-led advertising platform.
Havas London creatives Chico Barrera and Diogo Abrantes built the campaign around an edible installation spelling 'DON'T PLAY WITH FOOD.' Approximately twenty toddlers dismantled and ate it on camera, transforming the message into 'DO PLAY WITH FOOD.' The device turned the prohibition itself into the proof point, as reported by LBBOnline.
The campaign argues that sensory play with food develops children's confidence and willingness to try new foods. Ella's Kitchen extended the film into a digital content hub at ellaskitchen.co.uk featuring sensory-play activities, weaning recipes, and games, positioning the brand as an advocate for exploratory mealtimes rather than simply a food product.
Clapboard rates the 'Eat. Play. Love.' campaign 70 out of 100. The score reflects the work's strong creative coherence, genuine cultural insight, and clear brand alignment, while acknowledging that broader media investment could have extended its measurable impact across the United Kingdom market.
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