I love to cook. I also love to pull apart how people use digital media and technology to expand their business.
Jamie Oliver, the lovable British chef, and his marketing team fascinate me. After consuming countless hours of “Jamie Inc.” these past few years — his articles, his images, and his videos — I decided to sit down and properly analyse the nuts and bolts of what makes his content marketing machine so successful. We live in a world of abundant, terrible content; and if there’s one thing marketers need to grasp, it’s how to make proper content work for the brands they represent. Big, healthy budgets aren’t always the answer.
Jamie isn’t educating his viewers on his products. He’s educating his audience on how to do tasks that are related to his products and his expertise. That’s a technique that some marketers fail to grasp: educate your users on how they can better perform certain tasks because of your product — don’t just educate them on your product. Quick tutorials on salad dressings, pasta dishes, and simple recipes teach viewers the basic techniques to cook like he does, and to enjoy the best ingredients. He’s not plugging his own olive oil brand throughout the segment. He’s not raving about how great his style of pan is in the kitchen. He’s busy teaching people how to enjoy good food. What good are kitchen products if his customers don’t know how to use them?
I’ve worked with many brands that try to recharge old assets in order to save budget and resources. In marketing we call it “leverage”; which means, “making a lot happen with very little money”. What’s different here is that the content Oliver has recycled is actually worth watching again. If your content doesn’t meet the criteria I outlined above, and isn’t even relevant to your audience now — what’s the point?
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