Maggi Cooking Blindly Turns Inclusive Cuisine Into a Sensory Guide
Cooking Blindly is a 130-page sensory culinary guide created by Maggi and Publicis Brasil in partnership with the Dorina Nowill Foundation for the Blind, designed to make inclusive cooking accessible to people with visual impairments across Brazil through Braille text, tactile illustrations, embedded aromas, sound buttons, and an audiobook version.
Launched in Brazil in April 2021, the campaign arrived at a moment of particular institutional weight. The initiative marked Nestlé's centenary of operations in Brazil and aligned simultaneously with the Dorina Nowill Foundation's 75-year commitment to building a more inclusive society for people across the full spectrum of visual impairment, as reported by Clapboard. Rather than treating accessibility as an afterthought, Maggi and Publicis embedded it into the architecture of the product itself, producing a publication that stimulates all five senses across a single cohesive object.
The 130-page guide operates across five sensory dimensions. Touch is addressed through relief illustrations of completed dishes and full Braille printing throughout the text. Smell is activated by aromas of the spices referenced in each recipe, physically embedded into the pages. Low vision reading is supported through a typographic and design system calibrated for people with partial sight. Hearing is served by two parallel mechanisms: sound buttons integrated into the book's physical form that emit the sounds of cooking utensils referenced in each recipe, and a full audiobook version of the publication. Taste, the fifth sense, is addressed through the recipes themselves and their delivery to the reader's table. The campaign also launched an official companion website at cozinhaascegas.com.br, extending the sensory guide's reach into a digital channel. In the United States and globally, sensory design had been explored in product marketing, but in Brazil the Cooking Blindly project represented a systematic and comprehensive application of that logic to a culinary publication for people with visual impairments at this scale.
Maggi entered the Cooking Blindly project from a brand philosophy that cooking is a universal activity, one that everyone can and should participate in, regardless of ability. That philosophical anchor gave the campaign's strategy its internal coherence: the work was not conceived as a corporate social responsibility gesture but as a direct extension of the brand's existing creative territory, which had previously found expression in campaigns such as Imagina com Maggi, as noted by Meio e Mensagem.
The partnership with the Dorina Nowill Foundation for the Blind grounded the strategy in genuine institutional expertise. The Foundation, according to Clapboard, has maintained a 75-year mission of inclusion for people with visual impairments in Brazil, giving Maggi and Publicis Brasil access to lived experience and technical knowledge that shaped every accessibility feature of the sensory guide. In Brazil, visual impairment affects a substantial portion of the population; according to data cited by Educapes Capes Gov Br, Brazil has one of the largest populations of people with visual disabilities in Latin America, underscoring the scale of the audience the Cooking Blindly campaign sought to reach.
Strategically, the campaign positioned Maggi at a measurable distance from competitors in the Brazilian food and seasoning market, including Ajinomoto, whose own product communications in Brazil have historically centred on flavour and culinary tradition rather than accessibility or social inclusion, according to Ajinomoto Co Jp. By designing a Braille cookbook that doubled as a multi-sensory object — incorporating aroma tasting, low vision reading accommodation, and integrated sound buttons — Maggi claimed territory that no comparable brand in the Brazilian market had previously occupied, creating a differentiation built on craft and empathy rather than price or distribution.
Publicis Brasil constructed Cooking Blindly as a unified creative object rather than a conventional cookbook with accessibility features added afterward. Every element of the physical publication was designed from the outset to function across multiple sensory registers simultaneously, a discipline that required close coordination between the agency, Maggi, Receitas Nestlé, and the Dorina Nowill Foundation for the Blind throughout production.
The tactile dimension of the sensory guide is among its most technically demanding achievements. Relief illustrations of each dish were developed so that a reader who is blind or has low vision could form a spatial understanding of the finished recipe through touch alone. The Braille printing across the 130-page publication required precise production standards to ensure legibility by touch, while the low vision reading design — governing typeface selection, contrast ratios, and layout — had to serve a distinct set of perceptual needs from the Braille system. Both systems coexist across the same pages, a feat of typographic and production engineering that, as noted by Clapboard, reflects the depth of collaboration with the Dorina Foundation's technical specialists.
The sound buttons embedded in the physical book represent a further layer of creative invention. Each button emits the sound of a specific cooking utensil referenced in the recipe it accompanies, giving readers an auditory preview of the preparation process before they begin. The aroma tasting mechanism embedded spice scents directly into the paper stock at relevant recipe points, creating an olfactory cue tied to specific ingredients. The audiobook version of Cooking Blindly extended the same inclusive cooking philosophy into a fully audio format, ensuring the guide remained usable for readers who could not access the physical object. Production credits for the Cooking Blindly campaign are not publicly documented beyond the confirmed agency credit to Publicis Brasil and the partnership roles of the Dorina Nowill Foundation and Receitas Nestlé.
Cooking Blindly received formal recognition at the Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity in 2021, earning an Industry Craft Bronze Lion, as reported by Clapboard and confirmed by latinspots.com. The campaign also received shortlist recognition in the Direct and Design categories at the same festival, demonstrating that the jury evaluated it across both its communicative strategy and its physical production craft.
No independently verified circulation figures or consumer reach metrics for the Cooking Blindly sensory guide are publicly available at this time. What the award record does confirm is that the international creative industry, judged by the Cannes Lions juries, recognised the campaign's integration of Braille, aroma tasting, sound buttons, low vision reading design, and the audiobook format as a benchmark execution within the craft category. According to curlytales.com, the project drew international attention as an example of inclusive cooking design that combined functional utility with creative ambition at a level seldom seen in brand-led publishing.
Structurally, the Cooking Blindly campaign demonstrates high effectiveness across several dimensions that predict long-term brand value. The sensory guide functions simultaneously as a media asset, a product, and a public interest instrument, ensuring that its impact extends well beyond a single campaign flight. The Dorina Nowill Foundation partnership lent the work institutional credibility that no amount of media spend could replicate, while the timing — anchored to both Nestlé's centenary in Brazil and the Foundation's 75-year milestone — gave the project a narrative gravity that positioned Maggi as a brand with genuine roots in Brazilian society. Clapboard rates Cooking Blindly at 82 out of 100, reflecting the campaign's exceptional creative ambition, its disciplined multi-sensory execution, and its meaningful contribution to the representation of people with visual impairments in the food and drink category.
Cooking Blindly is a 130-page sensory culinary guide created by Maggi and Publicis Brasil. Launched in Brazil in April 2021, it incorporates Braille text, tactile illustrations, embedded spice aromas, sound buttons for cooking utensils, a low vision reading design, and a full audiobook version to make inclusive cooking accessible to people with visual impairments.
Maggi partnered with the Dorina Nowill Foundation for the Blind and Receitas Nestlé to create Cooking Blindly. Publicis Brasil served as the advertising agency. The Dorina Foundation, which has a 75-year history of inclusion work in Brazil, provided specialist expertise that shaped the guide's accessibility features throughout production.
Cooking Blindly won an Industry Craft Bronze Lion at the Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity in 2021, as reported by Clapboard and latinspots.com. The campaign also received shortlist recognition in the Direct and Design categories at the same festival, reflecting its evaluation across both strategic and craft dimensions.
The Cooking Blindly sensory guide engages touch through Braille printing and embossed dish illustrations, smell through aromas embedded in pages at relevant recipe points, hearing through integrated sound buttons and an audiobook edition, and vision through a low vision reading design. Taste is addressed through the recipes themselves, completing a five-sense experience.
Maggi launched Cooking Blindly in Brazil in April 2021 to mark Nestlé's centenary of operations in the country and to reflect Maggi's philosophy that cooking is for everyone. The campaign aligned with the Dorina Nowill Foundation's 75-year inclusion mission and addressed a significant population of people with visual impairments across the Brazilian market.
Cooking Blindly launched with an official companion website at cozinhaascegas.com.br at the time of its April 2021 release in Brazil, as noted by Clapboard. The publication also exists in a full audiobook version, ensuring the inclusive cooking guide remains accessible to readers who cannot engage with the physical printed and embossed format.
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