Case Study: Miso Tasty
“Express Yourself”
by Clare Cassidy
Miso Tasty is one of our favourite brands names, second only to School of Wok (fun wordplay is kind of our thing). We also love the Miso Tasty products; Japanese sauces and pastes packaged in accessible, easy to use containers. We run a YouTube channel for School of Wok dedicated to demystifying Asian cooking, so Miso Tasty is an obvious fit for us. Bonnie Chung and her merry band of marketing wizzes never fail to surprise and delight us with their ideas, and this time they did not disappoint.
This particular campaign focussed on their ingenious squeezy sauces, neatly packaged into easy-to-use tubes. The Miso Tasty team approached us with their idea to encourage their customers to ‘express themselves’ by using their sauces to write on their home-cooked dishes. Intrigued by the pitch, we gathered to brainstorm some ideas. How were we going to actually write on the food? What dishes would lend themselves to being written on? What would the text say?
One of our unique offerings at Curious Crabs is our access to a team of chefs who are happy to pitch in with ideas from the get-go, and this was a perfect example of how their expertise proved invaluable. Chefs are hardly ever approached with this kind of problem. What Japanese dish would lend itself to… being written on? The dishes would have to be smooth, firm and pale, so the writing would be visible. After some solid brainstorming we had our answers. Miso aubergine seemed like a good blank canvas. A fresh, firm piece of cod also fit the requirements. The last one had us stumped, but we finally settled on onigiri. With the help of a copywriting team the written phrases were settled on: Grilled cod with the words “for the love of cod” scrawled over it; the miso aubergine had just enough space to fit “aubergenius.” The onigiri would be left open, revealing the rice; a perfect blank space for “mmmmmiso tasty.” It was surprising, and engaging and cheeky, right up our alley!
This is when the dream team really kicked in. As a video production agency we are great believers in creating a collaborative atmosphere on set, rather than keeping our clients at arm’s length, and the Miso Tasty team certainly rolled up their sleeves and got involved. Bonnie literally ended up being the hands of the campaign, while the marketing team collaborated on the styling, “does this need a glass of lemonade? How about a napkin? Is the cabbage popping enough?” These guys weren’t munching sandwiches behind the monitor, they were getting stuck in and having a great time.
We went through a fair number of aubergines before we found the perfect size and the timing of the onigiri was tough. Getting the sauce to loop like actual writing was also a challenge. Think about using toothpaste to write your name, it doesn’t flow easily and stops and stutters a lot. Many hours later and we had the initial shots that would lead up to the big reveal.
How did we achieve the final writing? That’s our little secret. Suffice to say, we were writing on food for months after the campaign, eagerly sharing our creations with each other on our group chat. Who thought food writing could be a thing? Try it for yourself – hours of fun await. And check out the campaign here for inspiration:
