Food and restaurant marketing presents a unique challenge: advertisers need to convey major components of their products (taste, smell, feel) without being able to engage those very same senses. This means, of course, that food advertising has to pull out all the stops to create a visceral message that gets a product across without very much reliance on the product itself. Let's take a look at what marketers in other industries can extrapolate from these successes.
Get a New Perspective
Food & Wine recently shook up the publicity for its annual Food & Wine Classic, hosted in Aspen, by filling its Tumblr with perspectives from photographers who don't usually shoot food. Instead, photographers who focus on portraiture, landscapes, and interiors will be offering their unique style's take on culinary photography. Your business could do something similar, whether for advertising, site design, or content marketing. This kind of shift can bring an entirely new angle to your product or service, making it into something more than itself.
Focus on Simplicity
Del Monte recently updated the labels for their line of canned peaches and AdWeek has some interesting things to say about the ongoing theme of their advertising and packaging from the 1920s through the present day. Throughout Del Monte's entire history, the advertising team has focused on freshness. That's about it. There are deviations and expansions, of course, throughout that near century of history, but the message has been cohesive, simple, and to the point. In this way, Del Monte has been able to keep the focus on the quality of their product without losing anything in translation. Any business can learn from this: one type of success comes from doing the basics very, very well.
Be Ultra-Creative
This past weekend, Corona got creative by using the crescent moon to fill in for a "lime" in a beer bottle on a billboard in New York. Check it out:
In this instance, Corona didn't just think outside the box - they thought outside the planet. Obviously, you don't need to employ a team of astronomers to make your super creative ad work, but what you can do is figure out what you can substitute for your own metaphorical lime that's completely out of this world.
Do Something Really Cool
Domino's takes the cake - or perhaps the pie - with cool advertising stunts. Last week, Domino's launched a test of their futuristic pizza delivery system, which brings pizza to customers by drone. The prototype was dubbed the "DomiCopter" and was said to be significantly faster than delivery via the traditional car method. Whether or not the DomiCopter will ever move beyond the prototype stage is hard to say, but it is clear that a cool and interesting publicity stunt like this can easily get people talking and make a clear statement about your brand.
What other lessons might marketers take from the food industry? Share your ideas in the comments section!