When it comes to food marketing, brands have gone all in on #foodporn, which is used to caption ‘provocative’ images of food on social media. As one of the most popular hashtags on Instagram, #foodporn provides marketers with an opportunity to gather data that can be used not just on social, but across other marketing channels as well.
For example, the carrot company Bolthouse Farms recently devised a campaign to get its healthy produce in front of the #foodporn crowd. The company launched Urwhatupost last year with a chart that compares the volume of healthy vs. unhealthy food images on social. By tracking this data, it found that “junk food” searches were outperforming healthy food searches. So Bolthouse, a division of Campbell Soup Company, took this data and paved an unusual path to market its fresh fruit and vegetables. The goal: Turn a popular social media trend into a useful marketing tool that promotes vegetables with the same irresistibility as chocolate cake or an ice cream sundae.
Today, Bolthouse Farms’ Instagram is overflowing with images of summer “pizzas”, green juice cocktails, banana chocolate popsicles and other delicious snacks that motivate consumers to eat a little bit healthier. But the campaign wasn’t just social media goodwill; there was an underlying marketing objective. Bolthouse recently built a mobile couponing system that uses image recognition technology to reward consumers posting pictures of their smoothies and other healthy vegetables. This innovative direct-response tactic turned those ‘provocative’ images into a full-fledged promotion tool.
Analyzing hashtags and trends for marketing insight is nothing new. But only recently have tech-forward brands been able to apply data to their cross-channel campaigns in meaningful ways. Adobe Social, for example, allows marketers to aggregate social data and segment consumers—by, say, a particular hashtag—and then optimize with Media Optimizer. This type of multilayered execution has helped brands such as Lenovo and Otto effectively target customers with the right creative.
And foodie social trends aren’t only for food brands. Digital marketing agency Toquigny recently played on the idea of a summertime #foodporn picnic. The agency took this concept to South by Southwest this year in the form of a loud, colorful Toquigny Taco Tour bus. In exchange for using #foodporn tags on photos and videos, Toquigny shuttled visitors to local taco joints, providing free beer along the way. This showcased both their digital marketing capabilities as well as their experiential event promotion expertise.
Witnessing the success of #foodporn and other industry-specific hashtags, smart companies are learning how to quickly capitalize on social trends. That’s how a vegetable brand found its way into a conversation dominated by unhealthy food. By gathering the data from one social channel’s activity, brands are applying insights across channels in innovative ways.
