In the Food Sector, Online Came to Life.

At the birth of the digital age, it was often asserted that online doesn’t always translate to the offline- ‘real world’. Merely the domain of cute cats videos, and more recently-Tiger King content, or other feline related topics.

Included within on-going reports and articles published, we continue to analyse; millions of posts, billions of engagements across social channels with a particular focus on key food creators (influencers) and their audience. We stated there has been an increase in emphasis on baking content, particularly in breads and cakes. How has this played out into the wider, offline world?

Shortages

In the Middle East, we were fortunate that the Pandemic hit in the run up to the single, highest grossing period for the food industry-Ramadan. This allowed suppliers to fall back on well stocked storage facilities and replenish, before The Islamic Holy Month arrived, to cope with demand. This hasn’t been plain sailing, especially for local fresh producers. Other regions weren’t as lucky and experienced shortages in bulk goods, such as flour.

TV

The offline entertainment industry was relatively slower to react with producers such as H.B.O Max commissioning Selena Gomes’ home-cooking show including cook-a-longs from celebrity chefs. Factoring in the usual delay in TV production, it will be interesting to see to what the degree of relevancy will be?

Online

Digitally, a quicker win was the comedian Tom Papa, known for his skeptical, yet somehow optimistic take on life. He had always put out helpful baking content, but has now adapted his podcast, themed, ‘Breaking Bread’ to centre purely around baking/cooking, funny anecdotes from childhood, family, home etc.

He has already accrued impressive ratings and viewership (up from his previous efforts) across platforms. He recently explained on The Joe Rogan Experience that this was mainly thanks to being inundated with requests, and related conversations, on social media to keep the oven theme open.

It hasn’t been all sunshine and rainbows and certain brands have missed the boat, while others have profited. Even in the cooking sector.

Marketeers must stay be aware of these trends on a minute by minute basis. Sophisticated, tailor-made tools have to be used to capture this data and the appropriate, audience based, strategies must be developed to produce relevant content to a changing consumer.

About the data

DA has built a custom data warehouse service called Sila, powered by data science we turn that raw, social data into actionable insights.

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