Case Studies: Neff
by Clare Cassidy
I’ve just spent half an hour figuring out what an exploding truffle would sound like. Now sit back and think about that for a second. Would it sound like a puff or an explosion? Would it shatter or just implode? These are the kinds of details we have to wrestle with here at Curious Crab. Marketing for food brands is no easy task. Sure, in this particular case we were making videos for Truffle Hunter (the UK’s leading supplier of fresh truffles and delicious truffle products) and we did get to eat delectable truffles all day, and we were essentially exploding a truffle, which was great fun, but there is a serious side to my job too.
A great example is the NEFF campaign we worked on with our main client, School of Wok. NEFF has a great marketing team who use social media in the right way. What do I mean by that? They understand that content creators are now in new territory. Audiences can tune out in a second, competition for views is high, and nothing alienates these savvy subscribers like a hard sell. That’s why NEFF’s collaboration with School of Wok works. School of Wok has a successful YouTube Channel with loyal subscribers, who don’t like overt advertising. NEFF understood from the start that they couldn’t take over School of Wok’s channel, with their own brand heavy lingo. It would alienate the audience and taint the authentic experience the channel has carefully cultivated over the years. Instead, NEFF worked with us to create an ‘honest’ format, where the ‘brand moment’ is contained in a dedicated section of the video; without compromising the rest of the episode. The focus of the ‘NEFF section’ would always be on the chef’s honest experience with the appliance and how it genuinely benefits the recipe.
I think everyone understands that YouTube channels need sponsorship to survive, but that sponsorship needs to add value to the audience’s experience, and work seamlessly with the channel. The results have been amazing, and the audience have rewarded us with some hefty viewing figures on NEFF sponsored videos. What is the key to that? Good content.
The idea is to really get to know your audience and what they want. How do we do this? Call them daily and ask them what they’re thinking? Thankfully it's simpler than that. We used search tools on Google and YouTube to find popular search terms for our target audience. For example, a lot of people will always be looking for fried chicken recipes. The only problem is there are also millions of channels producing those recipes. That’s a lot of noise to cut through. To get our video ranking in the top twenty search results on Google and YouTube we had to find the search term that would cut out that competition and really home in on specifics. What category of fried chicken would speak to our audience specifically? In our case it was fried chicken, with a Korean twist. The title: Korean Fried Chicken Wings (The Real KFC), proved to give us an excellent search volume, with low competition. We used this method for all the recipes, hoping for some big hitters for the channel, and some wins for NEFF. The results speak for themselves. Korean Fried Chicken Wings is now on 483K views and climbing, and the NEFF team has seen some excellent traffic to their site.
Key learnings for us? First make sure the content is relevant and entertaining, collaborate with sponsors that suit the channel and can enhance the content, and do your homework before you shoot. A well-planned strategy can make all the difference. Which is why at Curious Crab we see ourselves as a production company with a marketing mind. In our opinion, the two go hand in hand, and we always have one crabby eye on content and one on the data. That’s how we see your world in 360.