What’s not to love about cooking shows? I mean, seeing a visual of a recipe turn from a bunch of ingredients to a beautifully crafted, delicious meal beats following and interpreting a 50 year old recipe you found in one of your mums battered old cook books any day. Well, that’s what I think! Watching and learning step by step how someone attempts to cook a dish is so beneficial for one main reason:
– It reduces your chances of error.
At the same time, you get to interact with the show and enjoy watching the transformation of ingredients to a meal in around half an hour. The down side:
– You don’t get to enjoy the finished product.
A number of companies have acknowledged this fascination with cooking shows, but have made it accessible in avenues that are more relevant to today’s digital world. One of those avenues being, YouTube.
Barilla is an example of a brand taking advantage of this digital shift. It has released a number of short clips of previous MasterChef contestants conducting a live ‘cook-a-long’ in the Barilla kitchen with 3-5 ‘cooks at home’ that are being streamed live to the kitchen. Each clip is of a different contestant cooking an easy to follow meal for the viewers at home and the different viewers being streamed each time.
Check out one of the clips below of Amina from season 4:
As well as being a great way to gain quick tips and ideas from familiar and trusting characters in an accessible, readily available way, it’s also a clever way to promote the Barilla brand amongst everyday cooks at home. By establishing the Barilla kitchen and posting these homemade clips, the brand is encouraging everyday cooks such as those being streamed live, to be there own MasterChef. And with the help of Barilla, they easily can be.
This approach is beneficial to the brand as it is able to interact with its audience on a different level and in a unique way compared to others, one that is relevant to today and reaches a huge amount of people.
So, do you think this a good step taken by Barilla? Do you know of any other brands that are attempting something similar?
Eat-Marketing 
what a great way to incorporate social media into a show! gets more viewers and also gets people to engage with the show and thus the brand gets massive exposure! Very cool idea!
I thought so too! I was especially intrigued because I’m a big masterchef fan!
This is a very interesting approach. Half cooking, half marketing about Master chef, and the master course,
its a win win for the company and for ourselves as consumers don’t you think! and all on the internet too, its a very clever approach indeed
great piece of marketing, really can get people involved with the brand
I agree, it creates awareness on a very different level and it seems to be gaining popularity!
What a great way to engage people with the Barilla brand. Not as in-your-face as advertising, and has that really authentic element there. I’ve seen some cool sponsorship ideas, but this is both interactive and it’s quite authentic – they’re just having a chat and doing some cooking. Really cool campaign 🙂
Thats my favourite bit, how it doesnt have that in-your-face element. You can choose to view it or not but its there for those that are interested!
Thanks for the comment!