Category Archives: Food and Drink

How Food and Drink Brands Can Use Online Video in 2019

The food and drink industry is one of the largest manufacturing sectors in the UK contributing £28.8bn to the economy and generating £22bn in export sales (FDF). In recent years we have seen new brands popping up left, right and centre, food networks dominating the online space and “How To Cook That” becoming one of the most searched phrases on Youtube. (OneSpot)

In 2019 food and drink brands should look enthusiastically to content marketing, and choose carefully the best avenues to take in order to achieve sales and growth. Amongst the many marketing opportunities available to food and drink brands, online video is consistently showing the best results and helping propel new brands into the spotlight. We’ve seen food channels like Twisted, Tasty and Tastemade take the industry by storm with their recipe videos. Also, with the popularity of online platforms like Youtube, Facebook and Instagram, it’s never been easier for brands to share content and spread their messages.

So, what are the best ways a food and drink brand can use video online?

Online Advertising

The great thing about online advertising is that it’s affordable, it takes advantage of the internet’s wide and global reach and can be accurately targeted when engaging customers and audience. According to Forbes, because of the visual nature, 80% of users can recall a video ad they’ve seen in the past 30 days. (Forbes)

Instagram and Facebook allow you to create sponsored or promoted video ads and carousels that can be targeted to only appear on specific audience’s news feed. These adverts can be targeted by demographics, geographical region, interests, job roles and lifestyles. So, you can produce a video that is specifically made, for example, for females above the age of 50 who work in London, and are interested in fine dining. You can then target these females with a promotional advert for a competition to win a fine dining experience at your restaurant.

Youtube offers a similar experience where you can host a “pre-roll” advert before a video and an “in-video” advert during the video. These adverts have the opportunity of being highly targeted as you can choose the best Youtube Channels to advertise on to suit your company’s products. For example, Asda do pre-roll adverts that run before popular food Vlogs, which look like this.

It’s short, simple and resonates with the audience of foodies as it’s about food and has a similar look to a recipe video. This type of advert maximises on engagement as it’s quick and relates to the audience’s interests.

As well as targeted ads on Youtube you can also advertise via Google on relevant platforms including food channels and forums like the Food Network and Delish, popular food magazines like Olive Magazine and Plant Based, or food blogs like Cookie and Kate.

Simply Cook have a banner ad at the top of a Delish recipe blog. It’s bold and engaging, with clear branding that fits seamlessly across the overall site’s style.

 

Branded Content

Branded content is regular videos for social media channels churned out daily or weekly, that promote a brand’s products, personality and encourages consistent engagement from their customers.

You can use Youtube to create long form branded video content like recipe videos, videos of your company like “Meet the Team”, “Meet the Chefs” and “Inside the Kitchen”, or cooking shows. Videos like this highlight your company’s personality and gives your audience something insightful or useful to take away. It’s one of the best ways to drive engagement with your brand.

Mindful Chef filled us in on what they had been doing over the Christmas period, collecting food from customers and audiences to give to the homeless.

And Absolut Vodka have done videos on their Youtube channel showing how to create alcoholic cocktails like this one.

Longer form Youtube videos can be easily shortened and included in your social media feeds like Facebook and Instagram Stories. This offers people eye-catching and bite sized content.

These videos are effective at engaging audiences during their on-the-go activities, whether on their lunch, at the gym or on a train, it encourages them to stop and watch what you are up to because it’s exciting.

And seriously think about using Facebook or Instagram Live for highly dynamic videos that will really engage your followers. You can film events, talk shows that you host, something that’s happening in your company or a behind the scenes of a shoot. Because it’s live, people will stop and take notice.

 

Collaboration Videos  

Collaboration videos are a great way for food and drink brands to come together and promote a like minded message. If you’re a cereal brand you can collaborate with a milk brand to create different breakfast recipe ideas. Or, both brands could create a video to promote a trendy activity like Veganuary. You can also collaborate with like minded food bloggers and vloggers to promote your brand. Send them your products to feature on one of their videos and receive direct engagement from their loyal fans.

Spoon Cereal did a collaboration video with Liberte Yogurt UK and made a 2 minute recipe video on Youtube that they marketed on Instagram story.

Food and drink brands can also do paid partnerships and collaboration videos online with food channels like Tasty and have products featured in a Tasty recipe video on social media. Tasty recently did one on Instagram with Ciroc.

 

Influencer Video Marketing

This is a great way for food and drink brands to market their products. Influencer video marketing has become extremely popular in the last couple years. Because of the increasing popularity of social media, we have seen the proliferation of  “influential people”, a person with a wide or large network of fans and followers. We have “Public Figures” on Instagram, famous Vloggers on Youtube, bloggers who have turned into celebrities and celebrities in the “traditional sense” like TV chefs. If you can get Kim Kardashian to upload a picture of your product on her Instagram, you have instantly hit 1 million customers. It offers you reach, it has strong promotional value and advertises your products direct to your ideal customers. Just be ready to pay as these guys don’t come cheap!

The Goat Agency used their influencer network to promote Graze the healthy snacking brand. They selected female influencers with a large female following in the UK and got them to post videos of the Graze products with a promotional code on their Instagram stories.

There are also micro-influencers that won’t have the same 4M followers that a Kardashian has but they do have a solid 10K of loyal fans and followers. This could offer you a better return on your investment as you have more choice and you could spread the sponsorship across a different number of relevant influencers. If you’re a vegan milk brand who wants to break into the Australian market, you could send your products to a vegan lifestyle Vlogger in Australia.

 

Multichannel Campaign

Once you’ve mastered all those different forms of online video you can then begin to tie it all together and create one big multichannel campaign. These work extremely well in the lead up to an event or when promoting a new product or trend. For example, Veganuary is upon us and it happens every year. Greggs just launched their Vegan Sausage roll and promoted it online with a video that looked very similar to the IPhone advert.

For a whole month you can create a multichannel campaign of online videos, advertisements and events that all relate and compliment each other. You can post vegan recipe videos on youtube, post short versions of the recipe videos on social media, run online advertisements of the vegan products, and send out promotional videos of your products – all with the same look and feel. Finally, you hold pop ups around town or in supermarkets allowing the public to taste your product. This all ties together to create one big multichannel campaign that can receive a lot of audience engagement.

Over Christmas, Baileys spent 4.3M on a multichannel campaign called “It’s Not Christmas Without You” comprising of a TV ad, Outdoor ads, social media content and Pop up stalls, samplings and events in shopping centres. (The Grocer)

There are a lot a different ways food and drink brands can use video online but these are some of the ones that will really help push your brand into the limelight in 2019. And, as the number of people watching videos online only continues to grow, with video predicted to make up to 80% of all global traffic by 2019. (Tubular Insights) Why wouldn’t you be looking to creating video this year? Give some of these a go and really spice up your food and drink marketing this year with some awesome video content.

Food glorious food.. Lots of us love eating it, most of us buy it, some of us like cooking it – and we’re all fascinated by it to one degree or another. It’s no surprise then that the food and drink industry is the biggest manufacturer in the UK today and contributes over 28 billion pounds to the UK economy each year. (BDO).

>> See how we can help you with our food videography services.

Operating in a landscape of fast-changing technologies and increasingly tech-savvy, online-focused consumers, food and drink companies are now having to take a lot on board when considering how best to promote their brands and reach their target markets. A 30 second ‘buy this product’ TV spot supported by some billboard and press advertising no longer cuts the mustard.

Amongst the challenges and uncertainty, one thing is becoming clear, and that is that video as a marketing tool is increasingly becoming unbeatable for generating reach and engagement in the food industry. Video content has been shown to produce the highest levels of engagement of all advertising formats and views of food-related content on YouTube are increasing 170% year on year (Tubular Insights).  Of course, the big global food and drink brands are ahead of the pack with video budgets and strategy, but small brands and start-ups also need to consider video as an essential part of their content marketing efforts in order to be competitive.

And it’s not all food porn and recipe videos. Here are some other great examples of the types of video food and drinks brands are currently producing:

Storytelling/connecting with an audience

Chipotle Mexican Grill – A Love Story.

This sweet, emotion provoking animated short emphasises the brand’s core messages of sustainability and food with integrity, whilst being an entertaining storytelling film in its own right.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DDG-kumi6Pk

 

Educating/informing on health benefits/ingredients
Graze – An introduction to protein.

For a company producing ‘healthy’ alternatives in the snack market, Graze need to share educational information about health and nutrition and show that they have expertise in the market.

 

Recruitment/Communicating behind the scenes company culture
Innocent.

Demonstrating its fun, quirky, independent vibe and customer focus, this film effectively works as a recruitment tool and a way of reinforcing Innocent’s brand values to a wider audience.

 

‘About us’ video
Hello Fresh. A simple but effective introduction to the company’s service and values.

 

Partnering with influencers/branded content– Captain Morgan Rum partnered with target market influencer, grime star Lady Leshurr on its #livelikeacaptain campaign, promoting its brand through a music video about drinking responsibly.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=utzkpGZFG_c

 

Demonstrating brand transparency/humour.
Absolut Vodka killed two marketing birds with one stone in this amusing video featuring naked Swedish men demonstrating the Absolut Vodka production process –  #vodkawithnothingtohide

>> Check out our blog on the 7 food and drink brands that are nailing TikTok right now. 

6 second pre-roll bumper ads
Oreo thins.

With a speeded up pastiche of a chef plating up Oreo thins in a fancy restaurant style, this video succeeds in grabbing the attention and getting its message across in the blink of an eye – perfect for bumper ads and mobile marketing. Here is a selection of 20 of the best bumper ads.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KAbISDSX-ME&list=PLlXZh4sJtb8FeCuXyZ90OyUCkpfzs1GtI&index=15

Small Films’ founder George Hughes spent 15 years producing and directing content for TV broadcast including serious documentary and food and cookery content. For more information about how Small Films can help your food or drink brand with different types of engaging video content, contact us here.

Small Films are food videographers. By combining strategic minds with creative flair we create powerful stories with video that deeply resonate with audiences, supporting our clients to achieve their ambitions in growing their organisation, brand or campaign.

 

Content Marketing Food

Feeling peckish? Food is one of the most popular and fastest-growing subjects for video content in digital marketing. In terms of online content, lots of us are yoga devotees; some of us love gaming and a select few of us are passionate about free-diving. Food, however, whether we like cooking it or just consuming it, is a unique form of content in that it appeals to pretty much everyone. The preparation and sharing of food has been at the heart of what it means to be human since earliest times – we use food for fuel, celebration, comfort and consolation; we have a deeply emotional connection with it. In addition, food stimulates the senses – it lends itself to a visual and dynamic medium like video. Watching food being prepared, cooked and consumed is captivating on a primal level. Research in sciencedaily.com showed that visual stimulation through enticing images of food increases a hormone protein in the blood which stimulates appetite. It actually makes us hungry! Whether we’d like to admit or not, we’re all hooked on looking at food.

The measure of food content’s success can be seen in its adoption as a growth strategy by the big online publishers. Food has always played a central part in traditional publishing content of course; all the big newspapers have food supplements and we lap up restaurant reviews and recipe pages in print publications. But social media and the growth of affordable video marketing has given food content a rocket-fuelled boost in recent years. Buzzfeed’s popular Tasty food channel to which 1 in 6 people in the UK subscribe, and the New York Times’ recent foray into discerning digital food content are hugely successful examples of this.

And the stats speak for themselves. Views of food-related content on YouTube are increasing 170% year on year (Tubular Insights). Food is in the top 10 categories of content that generate most engagement, and amongst Millennials, the popularity of food content is massive (a whopping 70% of food-related views are in this demographic). Food is therefore proving to be one of the most successfully visually appealing, emotive and shareable subjects in digital marketing. If seeing it makes your audience want to eat it – and social media can direct consumers directly to your business website – food and drink brands have some amazing opportunities to grow their businesses with cleverly targeted video content.

Here are some of the ways food and drink brands can capitalise on video marketing for growth (and there’s a lot more to it than just enticing recipe videos):

Social Media Advertising.

Video content generates the highest engagement of all online advertising. It is estimated that 92% of mobile video viewers share them with other people (Hubspot).  Users expect high-quality production values and great entertainment though to keep them watching. YouTube stats show that users skip ads on average after 5 seconds of watching so it’s important to grab the attention quickly. If you can pull it off, a well-made online food advert is so shareable on social media that it can go viral. KFC has just released 3 online videos using their infamous gravy to make cocktails, piggybacking on the niche cultural trend of ‘stocktails’ – whilst being quirky enough to pique the viewer’s interest. With over 270K views in a week, the ads are proving capable of cutting through the social media noise and creating some buzz.

Social media advertising is also brilliant for targeting your specific market through campaigns on individual social media platforms. Kids’ sweet brand Sour Patch Kids carried out a successful video campaign on Snapchat by collaborating with a popular YouTube influencer to record ‘sour then sweet’ prank videos and then utilising live video to have conversations with fans and consumers. The high-energy, fun and young social media app was the perfect platform for connecting with the brand’s potential teenage audience and Sour Patch Kids gained 120,000 Snapchat followers during the campaign. Utilising more online video content also contributed to their growth in sales by $30 million between 2014 and 2015.

Branded content.

Video provides a way for food businesses to integrate branded content across multiple platforms. Using video in different ways across broadcast, online, mobile and social media channels means that brands can digitally communicate their stories, tone of voice and messaging holistically. A big-budget TV ad might launch a new product for example, but regular video content posted across YouTube or Facebook can give depth, personality and consistency to brands. Some brands use these methods effectively to show a human side and connect directly with their audience – posting videos of behind the scenes, food production, and employees for example. Dunkin Donuts famously launched one of the first branded live Facebook videos when it posted a tour of its food development kitchen for a Valentine’s day promotion and competition, generating 21,000 viewers in 15 minutes.

https://www.facebook.com/DunkinDonutsUS/videos/10154465505323238/

Live video is a fantastic tool for connecting directly with customers and building a committed and engaged community of followers (and potential customers) and is ideal for a relaxed, informal brand.

Other brands have effectively used regular video content to demonstrate their ‘expert’ status, quality and authenticity. Waitrose launched a successful YouTube channel and collaborates with top chefs and influencers to produce gorgeous recipe videos using high-quality ingredients, whilst also placing an emphasis on ethical food production and sourcing. This appeals directly to its educated middle-class market and provides a way for its customers to invest emotionally in the brand.

Combine with influencer marketing.

The increasing visual and emotional appeal of food has not been lost on bloggers and vloggers and food and recipe influencer content is one of the fastest-growing types of food content creation online. Some foodie influencers have a much wider audience reach than many brands and many have built up vast, trusting and engaged followings. Without the corporate machinery, they can often produce content more quickly and regularly than brands. SORTEDfood is a brilliant example of this. A group of British millennial men decided to video themselves sharing banter and food and have built up a huge YouTube subscriber base of over 1 million people. With a relaxed and humorous vibe, and lots of engaging content like recipe battles where they each attempt to make the same recipe, their content is perfect for reaching a particular demographic of 20 and 30 something men (and women) who are interested in (and spend a lot on) food.

Collaborating to make joint videos with influencers like this can be a brilliant way of targeting specific audiences. When Lea & Perrins wanted a younger market for its famous Worcestershire sauce, SORTEDfood was the go to influencer. Together they made a series of videos and Lea & Perrins launched a YouTube channel on the back of the content, resulting in 2.2 million channel views.

  • Generate user action.

Video content is also a good way for brands to encourage genuine customer engagement and to prompt user action. Coca Cola carried out a hugely successful integrated marketing campaign when it launched named bottles, using broadcast and online advertising to stimulate customer engagement.

The campaign, which originated in the UK but went global, encouraged consumers to #shareacoke with friends and submit videos and photos of themselves with their named bottles to be shared online. It proved a brilliant way of generating a feel-good shareability of branded content.

Use video as a recruitment tool.

One issue that affects a lot of food and drink brands is recruitment. The food industry is employee heavy in terms of production and service, and recruiting enough good, qualified staff can be difficult. (This issue is likely to be exacerbated with Brexit – over 40% of staff in fruit, vegetable and meat processing and production are from EU countries  – as are nearly 15% of employees in the hospitality industry.) Video can be an effective tool for reaching the right audience of potential employees (young, social media users) and competing in a busy market. Have a look at a recruitment video we recently produced for restaurant group  Living Ventures which capitalises on this.

Small Films’ founder George Hughes spent 15 years producing and directing content for TV broadcast including serious documentary and food and cookery content. For more information about how Small Films can help your food or drink brand with engaging video content, contact us here.

Small Films are a London video production company. By combining strategic minds with creative flair we create powerful stories with video that deeply resonate with audiences, supporting our clients to achieve their ambitions in growing their organisation, brand or campaign. Give us a bell.