A weather-beaten old man wearing a white shirt and lungi sitting in the midst of a lush green field cooking on oversized utensils is all the rage on YouTube these days.

Grandpa Kitchen is the newest entry in the Top 5 emerging content creators on social media, clocking 25.78 million views on YouTube as of end-August. With 9.31 million Facebook views, Narayana Reddy, the golden ager who twirls his silver moustache with aplomb even as he ladles out everything from bisibelebath to butter chicken, has devoted followers on Facebook, according to video analytics marketing firm Vidooly. Brands galore dominate the videos of the culinary world’s favourite Grandpa with Hershey’s chocolate sauce and cocoa powder popping up during the making of chocolate muffins and Gowardhan ghee as he creates sheer khurma .

How exactly has this old man become an overnight sensation? Well, a good way to the digital consumer is undoubtedly through the stomach. Content kichens have found that food is the perfect recipe for engagement with consumers and are cooking up entertaining videos. The digital food print is expanding by the day, with Indian food video channels raking in 380 million views every month.

Hungry for food content

According to various statistics sites, over 25 per cent of posts on social networks are on food, drinks, cooking and nutrition. Millennials, especially, are hungry for food content and watch 30 per cent more culinary videos than any other demographics. How to Cook is a top trending search on YouTube. Food and foodporn are among the most trending hashtags on twitter and instagram.

Is it any surprise that Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, Snapchat, Tumblr, Twitter and Vine are spawning viral food videos of individuals who are either making or consuming food. Globally, Genius Kitchen and Allrecipes.com are digital media brands that are thriving on the food connect. In fact, from the BBC to the New York Times , every media platform has learnt that food is the surefire recipe for eyeballs on the platform. Perhaps none has successfully exploited it as well as Buzzfeed, which unleashed drool-inducing, addictive, food videos in Buzzfeed Tasty. It inspired many others to jump into the hot social video pan.

According to Subrat Kar, Co-Founder and CEO, Vidooly, “Food videos work well in a short-format category, and feeds very well with the platform strategy. When short format is married to the platform strategy, it makes beautiful synergy.”

For instance, a platform like Facebook counts three seconds as a view, whereas YouTube counts 30 seconds for its viewership numbers. “These food videos are also meant typically for a mobile-first audience,” points out Subrat. “Most times you can’t see the background or the kitchen. It’s just a hand sometimes. In a food video, content is king and is built for a mobile audience.”

He adds, “If the same content is uploaded on FB or on YouTube, one can see a massive change in the number of views of engagement. Advertisers are happy and are working with food content. The space is growing rapidly.”

Certainly advertisers are taking note. Around three years ago, the Innovation Group, JWT’s futurism, research and innovation unit, began researching the category, launching its study report on Food+Drinks. Its 2017 report is a close-up view of the trends shaping the sector — stuff like healthonism, reducetarian movements as well as how social media, especially instagram, is shaping the category.

Taste of things

Several brands — even those with no noticeable connect with food — are now using food, cooking videos and recipes as key drivers of engagement and traffic growth to their sites. Way back in 2015, Citibank used a food-based social media campaign, ‘What’sOnYourPlate’, to connect with premium diners.

More recently, home appliances company Kent has used Mumbai-based digital entertainment start-up Pocket Aces’ platform to connect with millennial audiences. Funded by prominent investment firms like Sequoia Capital, Pocket Aces has socially distributed channels like Dice Media, FilterCopy and a food channel, Gobble, that reaches 10 million people on a weekly basis. PocketACes showcased Kent’s rice cooker-cum-steamer in a scrumptious ‘Paneer Biryani’ video that got over 550,000 views on Facebook and Instagram.

Pocket Aces also created yummy videos for Betty Crocker, a brand dealing with baking and dessert items. Together, the two videos ‘Sunday Family Breakfast’ and ‘Rakhi Brownies’ amassed over 1.1 million views on Facebook and Instagram.

The company has worked with several top brands on Gobble such as Google, Knorr, Wonderchef and Epigamia. The Knorr campaign of 15 food videos amassed a reach of over 38 million, according to the company.

Feasting on videos

Data from Vidooly shows Hebbar’s Kitchen was at the No 1 spot all through May, June (89.5m views) and July (116.23m views) in the food category. Conceptualised and started by Archana and Sudarshan Hebbar, the online platform has a mini cooking show with a focus on vegetarian food, and is among the top-viewed Indian recipe channels for the past several months.

In the second spot is Pocket Aces’ Gobble, for May, June and July.

Ahmedabad-based food technology mobile application, Jolly Food Fellow, has constantly been among the Top 10 video views on FB and YouTube for several months.

Set up in 2015 by Rajiv Sharma and Niraj Harlalka, Jolly Food Fellow (JFF) is based on the idea that ‘you eat with your eyes’. The two founders met over their love for food. Rajiv Sharma is an alumnus of the Indian Institute of Technology, Kanpur, and co-owner of a popular juice outlet in Ahmedabad. Niraj Harlalka has an information technology background. The firm is creating local and national advertising opportunities for restaurants and the FMCG segment, driven by video content. Working alongside food influencers and chefs, JFF is creating multilingual content for targeted brand promotions. Earlier this year, Vidooly was instrumental in helping JFF become the largest food content platform in India, surpassing Buzzfeed Tasty and others.

In January, JFF was the No 1 food media platform on social media, with 77 million views, according to data from Vidooly. Last month (August) it was at No 13 spot with 9.31 million views, while Hebbar’s Kitchen, with its 97.40 million views, was at No 1.

Sharma says Vidooly’s tools “helped us in understanding the audience on different digital platforms and we worked on our content accordingly. This helped us to maximise our content reach and engagement.” In turn, Vidooly’s Subrat explains: “Food is not a science-driven category, but when an analysis is presented with a mix of creative plus data science, these guys come up with lots of creative ideas which work with millennial audiences."

He adds that over the past six months, several new players have joined the bandwagon. Most are “traditional players like Rajshri Entertainment, which produces movies and has now ventured into the food category.”

And proof of the pudding that food videos sell lies in the fact that even traditional newspapers have joined the fest. Punjab Kesari , the oldest Hindi-language newspaper, has ventured into food with Yum, a recipes vertical, that is clocking massive FB numbers.

Food certainly connects but the secret sauce is beautiful visuals and simple traditional recipes.

With inputs from Chitra Narayanan

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