Mazola
It started with…a precious drop
Team
Ally Ebdon, Chloe Wooldrage, Tom Smee, Lily Hicks, Agnès Préau, in collaboration with Brandon Consultants
Expertise
Social Media, Web Development
Background
Mazola is a well known staple cooking oil for the everyday cook.
Its golden corn and rapeseed oils have had their place in British pantries and British hearts for over 112 years., thanks to their delicate taste that lets the full flavour of recipes shine through.
Mazola’s aim is to help confident home cooks be their best in the kitchen. But as customer tastes and preferences change, Mazola needed to refresh its online look and develop a coherent strategy to attract its key audience.
The brief
How do you shine in a category known for low engagement and low emotional investment?
Audience research told us that Mazola cooks are confident in the kitchen; being avid foodies (albeit a little more aga than arancini) and hugely quality focussed. Of an evening, they love cooking and serving great tasting, nutritious meals for their partner, their friends and families.
They also like to keep things interesting and varied. They can be experimental with new techniques and enjoy being inspired by TV chefs. As a confident home cook, they are happy to give anything a whirl! They look for reassuringly high quality cooking oil to bring the best out of whatever’s on the menu that evening.
That said, cooking oils have long been a commoditised category with little consumer involvement. Our challenge was to break the mould and show that quality cooking oil is directly connected to the great meals that bring us joy.
Our brief was to reintroduce Mazola to the confident cook in the UK.
Our Solution
We worked with Brandon Consultants to imagine and implement a unique consumer proposition and positioning that highlighted the importance of Mazola in every recipe. A striking brand mark was created, supported by a strong colour palette, strapline and typography. A droplet icon was introduced to support the consumer proposition.
We arrived at a proposition of “it started with… a precious drop”. This message encapsulated the idea that every great dish starts as soon as a drop of Mazola oil hits the pan.
Fresh from a rebrand, Mazola was primed and ready to stand out from its lacklustre competitors on shelf. Now Mazola needed a strong online brand to match.
We built the new website around the drop, using micro-animations to bring the brand to life. To appeal to the new audience, we used rich visuals and engaging copy to show off Mazola products and all the fantastic recipes that they work so well with.
It was important for the website to appear relevant and relatable to consumers that otherwise wouldn’t consider engaging with an oil brand. We made it easy for Mazola to update their own site, and were commended for easing their ability to keep up to date on seasonal food and recipe trends.
Social media
Social media platforms like Instagram and Facebook were pivotal in telling Mazola’s story and connecting with the audience on a personal level. Recognising this, we tailored a content strategy for Mazola that would resonate with our confident cooks in a space where they spend a significant portion of their digital lives.
On Instagram, we curated a mix of vibrant and visually appealing posts, stories, and reels that highlighted Mazola's role in the culinary process. Every piece of content was designed to be not just eye-catching but also informative and inspirational. We showcased the versatility of Mazola oil through short-form videos that captured the transformative journey of ingredients in the pan, symbolised by the initial sizzle of Mazola's "precious drop." These posts were not only instructional but also invited engagement through "swipe up" features to detailed recipes on our website, encouraging a direct interaction with the brand.
Creatively, our content consisted of a mixture of brand and campaign led content. This created an interesting mix of themes to keep consumers engaged - everything from product benefits through to inspiring recipes.
We used a creative checklist to make sure that everything we did, both visually and in writing, met the brand’s aims of:
- Celebrating the new brand identity
- Harnessing the power of the precious drop
- Demonstrating our commitment to quality
- Keeping copy concise and powerful
- Suggesting rich food full of flavour
- Coming across as knowledgeable and proud
Through a combination of strategic storytelling, user-generated content, and engaging multimedia, we ensured that Mazola's presence on these platforms was as golden and memorable as the oil itself.
Influencer content
Working with the experts
We understood that our audience preferred to listen to established cooks when it came to trying new recipes or cooking methods. This, combined with our audience’s TV watching habits, led us to choose Great British Bake Off winner and bestselling author, Nancy Birtwhistle as a key influencer to drive our campaign.
Nancy Birtwhistle
From Great British Bake Off winner to bestselling author, Nancy Birtwhistle was our number one choice for promoting Mazola. Nancy’s authenticity as a baker shone through from her specialist tone of voice to her overall online presence. Her account focuses on cooking tips, vibrant recipes, and gardening advice through meaningful video content. We knew the Mazola audience would greatly overlap with her dedicated 280k Instagram followers, and her quality posts gave her clear credibility as a baker. The results proved this; with one Instagram post reaching 1.2k engagements.
Spreading the word
We also took advantage of smaller micro influencers and crowdsourced supplemental expert cooks, asking them to make recipes or take photos that followed the “it started with… a precious drop” campaign.
Spotify
Research indicated that Spotify was a great place to reach our audience, spreading the word beyond Mazola's social media presence.
Running audio ads on Spotify allowed us to concentrate on the brand language. A receptive audience was able to hear about Mazola on a frequent basis, creating a lasting impression of the brand in consumers' minds.
The results
tda! delivered a beautiful, fully-responsive website and tailored digital campaign that boasted impressive results.
Research indicated that the campaign was well received by Mazola consumers. We achieved an excellent reach to our audience with over 7 million people reached with an engagement rate of 2.5%.
Our Spotify activity in particular worked well with frequency and repetition. Each of the 615,000 targeted listeners heard the add six times on average, with a 97% ad completion rate.
