One of our favorite parts of our work with culinary brands is getting to know the clients themselves. Through the lifecycle of a project at Dish Works, we often clock a good amount of time on the phone with the marketing experts and brand managers on the client side. These conversations give us glimpses into the exciting — but increasingly challenging — scenarios that these professionals are navigating day in and day out.
On top of juggling tight deadlines, budget cuts and ever-changing trends, there is a new struggle that we’ve noticed is emerging. One of the biggest challenges that brand managers are currently facing is an expectation from their upper management that they will be the strategy manager AND producer/creator of the content. Everyone in the creative field is used to wearing multiple hats, but in this case, we’re talking about three jobs! Because long gone are the days of pointing your smartphone at a dish and snapping a photo for the ‘gram. Consumers expect content to be beautiful, engaging, clever and accessible, and to consistently put that out is simply too much work for one person, no matter how driven or talented.
For brands to expect their marketing team (often, a small-but-mighty team) to become photographers, art directors and food stylists, means they have less or no bandwidth to focus on what they’re actually pros at: marketing.
Since we see this kind of situation play out pretty regularly, we wanted to clear up a few things about the significant differences between content strategy and content production, and why it’s unrealistic to expect one person to do it all.
We don’t expect general contractors to build the entire house, right? Or, that the pilot of an airplane will also be demoing the safety features before takeoff and serving drinks and snacks to passengers!
In so many professional situations, systems work best and outcomes are the happiest when members of teams are given the space and time to let their strengths shine. When it comes to culinary brands, marketing pros are in the driver’s seat, making long-term, top-down strategic decisions about how the brand can best connect with consumers and fans, and what assets are necessary to accomplish that.
To do this well takes a lot of vision and the ability to zoom out and see all the moving parts of the whole picture. From what we’ve observed, this is close to impossible if the same person is tasked with creating compelling content on an ongoing basis.
When it comes to content production, we totally get that many brands aren’t able to hire an entire in-house team to support the marketing strategy. That’s where Dish Works comes in: Our team, which is made up of a wildly talented group of chefs, art directors, stylists, recipe testers and production assistants (…see how many people it really takes to do this right?), are the boots on the ground, ready to put our clients’ strategies into action.
To go back to the general contractor analysis, Dish Works is the bricklayers, plumbers and carpenters, following the instructions of the general contractor to construct a strong, stylish home. With the marketing manager’s oversight, we make content production and creation an easy extension of your in-house strategy and brand efforts.
Successful content strategy is all about consistent content creation. And overextending a marketing team, expecting them to create a thoughtful, dynamic, visionary strategy and produce all the content is a surefire way to inhibit consistency. Calling in Dish Works as the squad to put the strategy into action is a savvier, more efficient way to achieve your brand’s marketing goals.
Cliche as it may be, time is money! Hiring our team can actually save money for your marketing budget; once our clients add up the costs of shopping time, goods, prep, props, scripting, editing time, hiring talent, etc. on their own, most of our clients realize how much they are losing having their talented marketing pros doing the production work included in each shoot. By outsourcing to Dish Works, you save both time and money.
Plus, we offer a number of different content packages, including our Influencer-Style videos and Studio Days, that help make the most of your budget!
Ready to start the conversation? Hit us up to start the next leg of your brand’s culinary content creation journey.