Recipe books are more than “how to guides” for baking, cooking and grilling. Recipe books are heirlooms of heritage. They are family moments of joy and grief. Recipe books hold elements of tastes and traditions. Scribbles, notes, eared pages, cut out pictures and date notations help make recipe books a trove of history and culinary delight. Recipe books hold our story that are told over meals and moments.
September is a colourful month in South Africa. It is a time to acknowledge, and celebrate our heritage, and many of us will do it with food and flavour.
Great meals aren’t incidental, they are put together with purpose and skill. A recipe book helps drive this process providing structure, order and a logical approach. In baking some ingredients are only effective when used at the right time. It’s a symbiotic process where the one element activates the other. Sugar sweetens, browns and feeds the yeast. It only browns with heat, but feeds the yeast, to help the baked goods to rise, when cold. Baking is a step-by-step process that is informed by a recipe book but made by the baker.
It’s the hand of the baker or the cook that understands a pinch, a splash, a dash or a sprinkling. It’s in these pinches, splashes, dashes and sprinklings that the deliciousness is delivered. Like great meals and treats, good stories are also developed in a measured and structured way to deliver maximum flavour!
As enthusiastic cooks and bakers, MediaHeads 360 have been back in the kitchen over the last few weeks. We’ve been sharing our love of sculpting stories and the process of making them memorable. We’ve always believed that successful campaigns are developed with the unique ingredients that make brands great. Their products, service, promise and customer value are all pillars that can be added to a brand story that encapsulates their essence. Our approach is to understand brand narrative, language and personality. Coupled to these ingredients our story crafters add their own pinch, splash, sprinklers and dash to make consumers want to open the oven door and sample the goods.
The best recipes are those that always deliver. Consistency is key. Brand storytelling isn’t an ad hoc invite to the dinner table, it is about constantly breaking bread with consumers and allowing them to eat their fill and giving them a reason to come back to the kitchen tomorrow. Good recipes get tweaked and tested from time to time, as do good stories.
If we haven’t shared our story telling eco-system with you and your team, we’d love to connect this Heritage Month.
Let’s help you find your unique flavour and add it to the great South African recipe book of brands!
