A sea of women (and a few men), many dressed in red, filled the Winter Garden Theatre in downtown Toronto on April 23. They were there for the Love Your Heart benefit concert to hear music by Chantal Kreviazuk, Deborah Cox and Diana Krall, as well as listen to stories of "heart heroes" - women who've been personally affected by heart disease. The evening's host, Cheryl Hickey of Entertainment Tonight Canada, proudly introduced Margaret McKellar, brand building manager for Becel. Wearing a black dress with the obligatory splash of red courtesy of a pashmina, McKellar looked at home on the stage as she thanked the audience for being there.

The concert went off without a hitch (besides a few minor technical difficulties). And Becel's heart health message couldn't have been more prominent. The fact that heart disease is the number one killer of women but that most women don't know it was repeated throughout the concert, with the performers talking about the cause between songs. Diana Krall even incorporated Becel into one of her songs, which led the audience to laugh and applaud.

Last year, Becel came on board as the founding sponsor for the Heart & Stroke Foundation's "Heart Truth" campaign, which McKellar says was a natural fit: "They approached Becel to be the founding sponsor, and given the brand's longstanding heritage and mission of improving the health of people's hearts, we saw this as such an important step in our long-term vision." Besides the concert, Becel has supported the Heart Truth fashion show featuring Canadian female celebrities in red dresses, and the Ride for Heart bike ride along Toronto's Don Valley Parkway.

Becel was first developed by Unilever in the 1950s when the link between heart disease and saturated fats was discovered. A group of cardiologists asked the company to come up with an alternative to butter that was healthier for hearts, hence Becel was born. "Here's a brand whose mission is to improve the health of the world's hearts. It was founded in that and it's always been very true to that mission," says McKellar, discussing the natural brand "Heart Truth" partnering strategy. "And to me, having that sincerity and authenticity and clarity of what the brand stands for makes it so exciting."

In Canada, Becel is the margarine king. It holds a 49.1 share of the segment and a 23.1 share of the total spreads category, growing at +15%. Among spreads, its biggest competitor is butter. Becel is also big business around the globe. It's a strong brand in the U.K., the Netherlands and Germany, and Canadian creative has been recently exported to Turkey and Australia. In several other countries, Unilever sells margarine under different brand names, for example in the U.S., where it is called Promise and is a much smaller business.

In Quebec, different rules and regulations govern the names of margarine products (for example, Becel Buttery Taste is called Becel Gold), and, until recently, even governed the colour of the product. However, Becel's heart health message works nation-wide.