Memorable Cup Cakes Filmed by Mendip Media
Recipe videos are the offspring of one of the oldest TV formats, the cookery programme. This familiar genre has an enduring popularity running through from the early days of the BBC, with leading lights Marguerite Pattern and Fanny Cradock forging a programme type little changed by the current stable of celebrity chefs.
The lineage and popularity of the recipe demo is not in question, but can the same format engage potential consumers when it’s harnessed by a particular brand or retail outlet?
There are many examples of businesses doing just this: Heston Blumenthal & Waitrose, Marco Pierre White & Knorr; Gordon Ramsay & South African steakhouse chain Checkers.
But when budgets are tight, can the cookery format alone do the business for food brands and retailers?
I’d argue the audience is after the info, not the personality, and if the demos are well made, showing the quality, provenance and real instruction people are after, then brands only enhance their value.
From Colman’s mint sauce to Sacla pesto, recipe videos are already successfully engaging with the market on websites, in You Tube channels and across the social media spectrum from Twitter to Google+.
Seems to me the debate is not about the effectiveness of recipe videos as marketing vehicles, but how to produce them with an expertise that mirrors the technical and entertainment breakthroughs of current cookery programming.