Thursday, June 13, 2013

Brands relying on their community for create content

The slow march of creativity in the social media realm into the corporate marketing realm continues!

Food & Wine's Unconventional Tumblr Strategy

I've written about this twice before, but I'm really happy to see well-thought out plans which don't simply place ads on a social media site or just use photos taken by fans for the purposes of advertising.

Food & Wine's strategy is a bit different than what we've seen before in that they're not just relying on fans. They've chosen three photographers for different reasons, but none of them are known for being foodie or food photographers. I think this is great since there's still a lot of expertise being applied to who would provide a good eye, but take photos which will likely be very different from what traditional food or event photographers take. That alone is a great approach, in my mind.

Plus, they're not just placing their photos on a single site, they have plans to place these user generated photos not just on Food & Wine's tumblr, but also the photographers' sites and as an ad on Radar. It's a great way to get visibility not just to a larger audience, but to a wider variety of people.

Kudos to these marketing teams who are leveraging social media, but blending this into broader plans around how they are marketing their events or their brands.

Here's F&W's tumblr in case you want to see their yummy photos :)

http://foodandwinephotos.tumblr.com/