The Food Thinkers Themselves, Part 1

The benefits of our contributor model are two-fold:

1. High-quality, relevant, frequently updated content from experts.
2. Model of efficient production that offers long-term savings while enabling perpetual, valuable content creation that benefits the client’s brand and bottom line.

Beyond the typical

Working these benefits out for Food Thinkers took getting to know the food space and different people’s relationship to food. The Food Thinkers platform is not merely a blog in the singular sense. It is meant to be a site with a growing number of contributors and content targets.

Food Thinkers is an online stream of simple moments of brilliance from kitchen collaborators around the world — recipes, food pics, video, sound, and taste. Brought to you by Breville.

Some differences

Food Thinkers differs drastically from many other types of brand outreach in the blogosphere. It is essentially a sponsored channel. Much like a brand might sponsor a TV or radio program, Breville is sponsoring the whole channel.

It’s definitely more of a soft sell. You don’t have a bunch of banner ads; you have interesting stories told by people who know what they are talking about. You have podcasts about cool and informative topics. You have videos that teach you something useful.

The Breville products are there — an integral focal point of the overall “Simple Moments of Brilliance” that each bit of content relates. But it’s not ridiculous SEO writing or hit-you-over-the-head advertising copy or get-someone-to-talk-up-a-product PR. It is quality, relevant, and timely.

The right people

To achieve this focused quality with the slow-growth model, we needed to find contributors. We sought out people who, ideally …

• know their food or beverages
• have their own platform to promote
• are interested in cross-promoting their platform and ours for mutual benefit.

Starting the content engine

To get the ball rolling, we did a lot of in-house writing and photography. We love food, and some of us are even quite good cooks.  But the model is to pass it on and engage influencers in creating the content — influencers who have platforms or have the potential and could use the boost of a powerful brand.

I will outline the next steps — next time.

About the author

Josh Cole - Josh Cole was born to create content -- from his pioneering works in anarchoustic and hobophonic sounds & web content to writing across a wide variety of media. Joining the team in Spring 2009, he has been instrumental in crafting and producing oodles of content for Breville, Putnam Investments, and Tippingpoint Labs. He rides a near mint 1964 Raleigh Colt to work. He still remembers which accessories go with each G.I. Joe action figure. He writes with the kung-fu action grip. Josh is in charge of content for a variety of clients. His favorite Tippingpoint Labs value is: "There is a content solution to every business challenge."