Fiesta Farms Video #4: Meeting Oma (Wanda)

I spent the day with my friend Arlene Stein’s Oma; a woman from the Alsace Loire region of France (right at the bor­der of Ger­many). She pre­pared an amaz­ing stuffed beef dish called Rouladen.

Early on I noticed that Oma used a prod­uct called Bisto in almost every­thing she made. She mixed the white pow­der with flour and water and presto, she had gravy. Oma was clearly taken by the stuff. She remarked “look it’s white, but when you add water it’s brown.”

I thought that Bisto must be some obscure find from a Euro­pean deli. But, no. It appears that Bisto is a mas­sive phe­nom­e­non. Bisto just cel­e­brated its 100^th anniver­sary and dom­i­nates the British gro­cery market. Bisto is so big in fact that it’s entered the nomenclature.

Type Bisto into Twit­ter and you get results like this one. “How’s life any­way hun?« all gravey like Bisto”

My per­cep­tion of Bisto as an old lady brand was fur­ther shat­tered by my real­iza­tion that they have an absolutely kick-ass social media campaign.

Ads like this one from the 80’s show that Bisto has always been posi­tioned as part of the fam­ily. Now Bisto has taken it one step fur­ther by tak­ing on the issue of fam­ily meal time. For years experts have espoused the impor­tance of fam­i­lies eat­ing together, but real­i­ties often get in the way. Bisto asks fam­i­lies to work hard to eat together at least one night a week.

The cam­paign kicked off with a mov­ing ad cam­paign focus­ing on the value of fam­ily meal time. The campaign’s sig­nif­i­cant social media com­po­nent lives on the ded­i­cated ahh Night web­site. The web­site engages vis­i­tors by high­light­ing the issue and the ben­e­fits of fam­ily meal time; A Bisto spon­sored study revealed how rarely British folk eat as a fam­ily (less than 1/3 do it once a week). It also high­lights infor­ma­tion from a respected psy­chol­o­gist about why fam­ily din­ners are vital.

Then, the site engages fam­i­lies in mak­ing a change by ask­ing them to take 3 sim­ple steps:

• Down­load and sign a “con­tract” pledg­ing to eat din­ner together one night per week
• Send fam­ily or friends an email invi­ta­tion to dinner
• Make a deli­cious meal (recipes pro­vided) using – you guessed it – Bisto.

Once you’ve signed up, you receive reg­u­lar tips to help your fam­ily stay the course.

What makes this social media cam­paign such a good one for Bisto?

• Right Fit: If fits with their brand; Fam­ily and food is what Bisto has always stood for
• Rel­e­vant: Fam­ily meal time is a real issue that need to be addressed
• Use­ful: The sim­ple tools and infor­ma­tion help fam­i­lies make the change
• Do-able: They are ask­ing peo­ple to pledge one night a week. And the they make the process of engag­ing simple
• About the Issue: Sure Bisto does (at the end of the day) pro­mote recipes made with the stuff, but really, it’s about the issue, not Bisto

So there you have it. Cook­ing with Oma turned out to be about much more than old world cook­ing. It lead me to dis­cover a pretty cut­ting edge social media cam­paign. Truth is, cam­paigns this good make their own gravy.

Thanks Wanda. Tomor­row, I meet Jessie and her daugh­ter Nicole from Jamaica.