The Top 10 Food and Drink Social Media Influencers?

7th July 2020

written by George Hughes

Food and Beverage (F&B) is big business on social media. This is reflected by F&B brands getting the most mentions on Twitter, with a 32% share of tweets. Coinciding with the food and drink social media boom is the growth of influencer marketing, which has an estimated worth of $15bn. 

Marry the two together, and you have an opportunity to exponentially grow your audience while improving the bottom line. It bodes well for food and drink social media influencers, but who are these influencers making waves in the world of F&B?  The Small Films team check out the top food and drink influencers to watch. 

1) @elavegan

With more than one million followers, Michaela Vais is one of the biggest food bloggers around. She creates vegan recipes and shares them with fans. Since starting her food blogging, she has gone on to become an author, photographer and one of the most recognised influencers in F&B.

instagram picture of elavegan account

2) @memysmoothiesandlife

Sweden-based Anna Lindberg is the queen of the smoothies. Her Instagram page, memysmoothiesandlife, has amassed more than 84k followers as she creates eye-catching imagery based on delicious-looking smoothies. Anna covers everything from superfruits to easy-to-make smoothie recipes.

colourful smoothie bowls with fruit

3) @uglyproduceisbeautiful

As one of the first influencers to monetise social media, Sarah Phillips knows a thing or two about influencing. Her platform showcases food art, using items like watermelon to create fruit grids and oranges to display hanging citrus. It’s easy to imagine Sarah’s works in galleries and exhibitions.

4) @transatlanticfoodies

Sonia, from Switzerland, and Vishnu, from India, form TransAtlanticFoodies, an Instagram page that explores the best foods from around the world. So far, the duo has 30k followers, who log in to see the latest dishes that feature on the account.

5) @nobread

Nicole Cogan built her 200k-plus following by finding tasty gluten-free desserts from around the world. She uses social media to display her latest gluten-free findings, as well as travel around the world and her own recipes. Nicole has a large following on Instagram and TikTok.

Instagram picure of nobread account

6) @jancisrobinson

Being one of the Queen’s personal wine consultants clearly wasn’t enough for Jancis Robinson, who has gone on to build up quite the following on social media. Jancis is also a BBC producer when she’s not advising the queen or advising her 81k followers about the best wines around.

7) @themodernproper

If you’re looking for versatile recipe creators, then look no further than Natalie Mortimer and Holly Erikson. Their account features a wealth of recipes that use favourites like pasta, soups, gluten-free options, meat dishes and more.

burger, soup and noodles

8) @davidchang

When Vogue describes you as “America’s most relevant chef”, you know you’re onto something. David Chang, food experimenter and restaurateur, has captured the hearts and minds of many with his Asian dish tutorials that have seen him build a following of 1.7 million on Instagram. 

9) @joshuaweissman

The majority of F&B influencers have mastered Instagram, which isn’t much of a surprise considering its image-led appeal. Joshua Weissman, however, has achieved a following of three million people on TikTok, a social media platform still in its infancy when it comes to F&B. The chef uploads short and snappy recipe videos that don’t take themselves too seriously.

10) @mondomulia

Guili Mule records her travels, where she partakes in fine dining and plenty of coffee tasting. When she’s not jet setting around the world, Guli creates her own recipes and shares them with her 57k fans on Instagram.

11) @gizzierskine

The super-talented chef Gizzi Erskine has an Instagram full of her own luscious recipes, her new haunt in Margate and delicious meals she’s tasted around London and beyond.  This is a page to visit if you want to see drool-worthy comfort-style food. 

12) @winingawaytheweekend

Named by The Telegraph as someone who is ‘shaking up the wine world’ Georgie Fenn is a wine influencer who educates her audience about anything from chablis to pinot noir. 

Cooking up a storm on social media

Influencers are continuously coming up with new and fun ways to depict recipes and grow their audience. It’s no surprise that many F&B brands desire to work with them, so they can tap into their audience and increase their social media outputs.

George Hughes is a former television Director and the Founder of video marketing agency Small Films. His company helps brands to communicate with a wider audience using strategic video content.

If you’re looking for a London video production company and want a professional hand in creating compelling, authoritative video content as part of your marketing strategy? Get in touch today.

 

TikTok is embedded in the cultural zeitgeist and is the fastest-growing app in the world. With more than 1.5 billion users worldwide, it’s a great platform to get noticed – especially if you’re a brand in the food and drink industry. 

Why food and drink, you ask? Because there are few things as visually stimulating as well-prepared, mouthwatering ingredients and thirst-quenching beverages. Just watching a well-put-together video of a culinary dish is enough to get the taste buds going. 

If you’re in the food and drink industry and would like to use TikTok to enhance your audience, you’re in luck. At Small Films we’ve put together seven inspiring ideas that show you how brands are making fun videos that resonate with their audiences and get them in the mood for some grub. 

1) Pepsi India

Pepsi India broke the world record for consumer engagement with its Swag Step Challenge. The challenge received more than one million uploads and 30 billion views for short videos that asked people to synchronise their salaam, namaste and swag to the beat of the music. 

Pepsi found a way to make it look like their drinks had the relative “swag appeal” while engaging with their audience through Bollywood-themed dances.

@shehnazgill1

Salaam namaste karne mein hi swag hai! #SwagStepChallenge @pepsiindia

♬ Pepsi Song – Yash

2) Chipotle

The company whose TikTok byline is “less Tok more Guac” is consistent with its social media output. Campaigns include holiday themes, such as Halloween #boorito, which received more than four million views. 

The brand is continuously finding clever ways to keep people tuning into their content and raising those engagement levels. As a result, Chipotle is becoming synonymous with a whole new audience. 

3) Gushers

Fruit Gushers is a popular US candy maker who has excelled at TikTok recently. It has amassed more than 2.5 million likes during its short time on the platform, thanks to entertaining content such as Mega Gushers. The fun play on the size of its candy managed to generate over 500k likes and more than 4,000 comments.

4) Sabra Hummus

The beauty of TikTok (and the right creative mind) is that it can make something relatively dull like hummus seem interesting and inspiring. Sabra Hummus goes about this by creating unique and engaging content that makes you want to rush to the cupboard and find something edible in a tub of delicious hummus. 

From little kids trying hummus for the first time to funny videos playing to the backdrop of popular songs, Sabra Hummus has utilised the platform and built up a strong following in a short space of time.

@sabra

Priorities #hummus #sabra #fyp #4u #food #howimmus #vegan #tiktokfood

♬ Cuz I Love You – Lizzo

5) KIND Snacks

New York-based KIND Snacks make healthy snacks for when you’re feeling peckish but don’t want to splurge on unnecessary calories. And they’re pushing those products on TikTok with engaging content like #kindsimplecrunchcontest, which sees users emphasising a particular bar’s crunch sound in a fun and smart way. The contest has generated an impressive 73 million views.

6) The Real Freal

Shakes and smoothie maker, The Real Freal, has hopped on the TikTok bandwagon to promote its drinks range. So far, it has garnered more than 10 million likes with snappy videos that play on their different styles of shakes, such as thin, regular and thick options.

7) Kool-Aid

“Ohhh yeahhhhhh” is the famous Kool-Aid catchphrase that’s been referenced in just about everything, from TV to posters. Now it’s taken on social media form with Kool-Aid content on TikTok via hashtag challenges and prized giveaways. 

Users were encouraged to post videos of themselves using the tag #OhYEAHChristmas for the Christmas challenge. The Kool-Aid beefed-up marketing with videos featuring rapper Lil’ Jon and the brand mascot. It also worked with other influencers who had strong followers so that the campaign received wide-spread traction.

man holding cds
Source: cnn.com

Making the most of TikTok with your food and drink brand

Even with these examples, there isn’t currently a large volume of food and drink brands using TikTok to reach new audiences especially in the UK. This means you can be an early adopter, creating fun content that appeals and gets new audiences talking about your brand. TikTok is experiencing a meteoric rise in popularity at the moment so it’s the right time to get involved. 

If you need help creating any video content to bring your brand to life on TikTok then why not give us a shout at Small Films. We’d be happy to help you with your TikTok strategy.

George Hughes is a former television Director and the Founder of video marketing agency Small Films. His company helps brands to communicate with a wider audience using strategic video content.

Want a professional hand in creating compelling, authoritative video content as part of your marketing? Get in touch today.

 

Every now and then something explodes onto the scene and captures everyone’s attention, instantly inserting itself into the cultural lexicon. That’s certainly the case with TikTok, a social media platform that’s taken the world by storm. 

You might know it as “those short videos of people doing entertaining things”. But in reality, it’s so much more. 2019 saw TikTok become the second-most downloaded app globally behind Whatsapp, and it currently has one billion users. 

TikTok’s rise to prominence hasn’t gone unnoticed in the marketing world. A growing number of brands are looking at it to see how they can reach new audiences. And it should definitely be part of your marketing strategy, especially as there are so many active users on the platform.

women with confetti having photograph taken

Another bonus is that, unlike Instagram, TikTok is a platform where it’s possible to achieve organic reach. However, you’ll need to get involved in the TikTok revolution soon because it’s highly likely the algorithms will soon change and make it harder for people to go viral organically. 

In order to help you better understand the world of TikTok from a marketing perspective, we’ve put together this ultimate guide for brands. So, read on and find out everything you need to know about TikTok. 

phone screen showing all the apps

How did it start?

What started as an app called Musical.ly became TikTok when Chinese company Bytedance acquired it. The video-sharing app’s primary audience consisted of Generation Z, younger demographics who were instantly drawn to its short and snappy video clips. 

These initially came in the form of people lip-syncing to music artists. Much like any trend on the internet, however, creativity took over, and users started experimenting with the app to create everything from viral challenges to comedic clips. TikTok (or Douyin as it’s known in China) has more than a billion users in China, with a further 800 million in the rest of the world. While the audience currently sits on the younger side of the spectrum, like any platform that gains huge popularity, the age will increase as it appeals to older generations and goes more mainstream.  

How does TikTok work?

After signing up for an account, you’ll be able to change your generated username, add a profile picture and a short bio. This part may seem somewhat mundane, but all top brands know the importance of making profile information snappy for people who come across their profile. Don’t worry, you can also change your username later if you aren’t sure what to choose.  

The app is divided into two primary feeds: For You, which is an algorithmically generated stream of videos; and Following, which is the accounts you follow. You can like videos much in the same way as you do on other social media networks. Sharing a video is pretty straightforward too. Tap the plus sign at the bottom of the screen and start recording.  The brilliance of TikTok lies in its short video bursts that last for 15 seconds, though users can blend those clips together to create 60-second content. 

How TikTok works for brands

The success of TikTok with younger audiences is no surprise: Gen Z is a video-first generation. By 2022, online videos will make up 82% of all consumer internet traffic. TikTok is part of that revolution.

Brands quickly saw TikTok’s reach and wanted in on the action. After all, Generation Z is set to command 40% of all consumer shopping by the end of 2020. Major players like Google, Nike and Coca-Cola have all embraced TikTok and created content for the platform.

Here’s how to make it work for you…

Advertising

Advanced targeting and unique creation features make TikTok Ads particularly appealing to brands who want to create compelling campaigns. If you’re struggling to build an audience, TikTok Ads can provide a boost to get you up and running on the platform.  

Sponsoring influencers

Much of TikTok’s beauty lies in the creatives who continuously churn out content. Tapping into their fanbase can be a great way of getting your brand in front of thousands (perhaps even millions) of followers. Of course, it’s necessary to have synergy with any influencer, but it’s certainly a route worth exploring to gain exposure. 

Starting hashtags

Like any other social media platform, creating hashtags can increase your visibility and reach. They’re also beneficial for recognising competitors and collaborators (see above). You might even get great content ideas from similar hashtags to yours and notice important trends that can propel your brand forwards. Oreo hit the mark with #cookiechallenge, Guess found success with #InMyDenim and Samsung successfully promoted their Galaxy A smartphone with #GalaxyA. 

Take the #CookieWithACause challenge on Tik Tok. Post with the hashtag and OREO will donate to Save The Children for the…

Posted by OREO on Sunday, 5 April 2020

 

Brands who have cracked TikTok

If you’re after proof of TikTok’s appeal, then look no further than these brands who have successfully marketed to new audiences on the most addictive social media app. 

NFL

America’s favourite sport, the National Football League appeals to a variety of different demographics. And it tapped into TikTok to tell a multitude of stories, from heartfelt player profiles to fan-player engagement.

Chipotle

Chipotle has always been a trendsetter when it comes to marketing, and it carried that success over to TikTok. The Mexican food brand placed emphasis on engagement, creating fun challenges like #ChipotleLidFlip. The video currently has over 300 million views.

Fortnite

Video Game Fortnite has always had its finger on the pulse when it comes to interacting with audiences. Its most recent venture into TikTok asked fans to create a bespoke dance move, with the best ones ending up in the game.

Sony Music

Sony went down the route of influencer marketing for its TikTok campaign. Working with Nicky Jam x Sch to promote the song Atrévete, Sony contacted 12 influencers on the platform to create TikTok videos set to the backdrop of the track. The result was eight-million engagements, 1.2 million likes 10,300 user-generated videos.

@poki

i can’t believe i’m saying this but i have my own @Fortnite Emote! 🤯🥳 you can get one too by entering a dance with #EmoteRoyalecontest #EpicPartner

♬ original sound – Pokimane

Top Tips
  • Don’t make your videos too polished; it’s better for them to be shot in the same style as user generated content, using a smartphone. 
  • Break your videos in half with the first video teasing the next in the series. 
  • Look for what’s trending and jump on the bandwagon.
  • Use hashtags effectively. Putting hashtags in the comments of your videos will help with visibility. 
  • Like other people’s content who are in the same space as you
  • Interact with other accounts where possible and leave comments

Tik, tik, tock

There’s no doubting TikTok’s power. The app is proving to be popular with all ages, and will only become more embedded into the cultural zeitgeist. As a brand, you have the potential to master the platform and create engaging and fun content for your audiences. 

George Hughes is a former television Director and the Founder of video marketing agency Small Films. His company helps brands to communicate with a wider audience using strategic video content.

Want a professional hand in creating compelling, authoritative video content as part of your marketing? Get in touch today.