How a few recipe for “The Best Flamin’ Hot Cheeseball made with CHEETOS?” Or how do 10-Minute Quaker Oats Air Fryer Cookies sound? Those are only a few the unexpected content that food lovers of every kind will find on the FLVR TikTok page, which was inspired by the voyeuristic pleasures of #FoodTok and designed to re-spark the enjoyment of food for the subsequent generation of home cooks who’re weary of push promoting.
PepsiCo Foods launched the FLVR TikTok channel in early 2023. In just six months, the channel reached 1 million followers and has grown into one in all the most important branded food entertainment communities on TikTok and the most-followed PepsiCo brand on the platform globally. Now also available on YouTube, Instagram, Amazon FireTV and online at www.fl-vr.com, this system features greater than 1,750 TikTok-native pieces of content that talk on to a Generation Z audience.
The experience of constructing and growing this unorthodox brand channel has inspired just a few snackable insights that will help marketers in any industry who aim to speed up growth and transform a brand without overtly selling to the target market.
Go all-in on authenticity
With Gen Z spending an estimated 6.6 hours per day consuming media, it’s easy for them to tune out content they aren’t searching for out. Designed specifically as an antidote for push-based marketing fatigue, FLVR was designed to boost our brands’ culinary credibility and expand beyond our core categories and consumption occasions.
Marketing professionals who need to pursue this strategy have to consider maniacally of their vision. You’ll have to put up an editorial firewall and persist with it. At PepsiCo, FLVR is an efficient vehicle for the brands versus a vehicle being driven by our brands. Solicit recommendations and artistic ideas out of your brands but empower yourself with the ultimate say in all content decisions. Once the platform has gone live, add social media performance data to your editorial meetings to assist drive decisions and lean into what’s resonating along with your audience.
Organic co-creation beats pristine solo creation
To keep things authentic, we knew it was critical to populate the platform through co-creation with micro-influencers. That meant turning over the keys to the creators our target market loves to observe. Consumers can spot inauthentic fakes in a flash, so for this strategy, the larger payoff comes from taking larger risks. We gave micro-creators open briefs to maintain it organic by letting them develop their very own content and voice. It’s an approach that has worked for other PepsiCo brands like Doritos Crash the Super Bowl and Lay’s Do Us A Flavor, and it really works partially because we give control to the influencer while inspiring content that’s still on-brand. Snack products are sometimes a part of what consumers recall most fondly about a few of life’s best – and messy – unplanned moments.
Keeping the fireplace going
As physical cookbooks have been essentially replaced by digital devices, the chance unlocked to increase the reach of the FLVR content to television. Rather than run campaigns in parallel on each style of media, we sought to raise the FLVR strategy by bringing social content to Amazon’s FireTV. Consumers could watch videos from content creators after which order Frito-Lay products directly from Amazon. Expanding to this latest platform continued to grow the FLVR audience, viewership, engagements and channels, especially amongst avid Gen Z home cooks.
When FLVR was launched, it provided PepsiCo brands “stretch beyond the salty aisle” and promoted latest usage occasions. Now, it’s an efficient vehicle to advertise away-from-home partnerships and maximize audience utility through authentic content.
We will proceed to fuel our evergreen communities while finding latest channels and ways to raise the brand and content. This recipe for replacing perfect content from a marquee brand with perfectly imperfect content from a universe of creators and influencers can work for any marketer who needs to interact an audience fatigued by push content. The most significant ingredient is the willingness to take calculated risks and switch over the keys to co-creators who likely know your audience best.
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