Using Social Media To Share Good Food: Lurpak

Here at FreshNetworks we are fortunate to have several keen bakers in our team, and we love it when cupcakes, cookies and brownies appear in the office.

Sharing baked treats is a fine example of the social power of food – something which Arla Foods butter brand Lurpak has taken into account with their latest social media activity.

Lurpak has adopted a similar approach to that of Wrigley’s Extra by creating several social opportunities for food lovers to share their creations and recommendations.

Bake Club

The Lurpak Facebook page states that “The First Rule about Bake Club is to tell everyone about Bake Club”, offering a clear call to action. The purpose of the club is for groups to create a baking rota, where automated reminders are sent out to the next baker in line with a reminder ahead of time. The members are then encouraged to upload a photo of their creation, which can then be rated.

Photos can be viewed in the gallery, and they are also automatically posted to the Lurpak Flickr gallery – which is ideal for sharing with off-site members (our client Jimmy Choo would perhaps love this cake). At the time of writing the site had just under 11,000 members and 1,400 photos available on Flickr.

Good Food Finder

In keeping with the message that “Good food deserves Lurpak” the company has created a resource for food lovers to share and recommend their favourite places to find great ingredients. Both the Lurpak website and Facebook page  prominently promote their recently launched iPhone app – which we have tried out.

The app provides a very useful, portable resource, especially when using GPS information to show where to buy quality ingredients nearby – particularly useful if you are in an unfamiliar area. One drawback is that none of the entries we came across  have any comments, so it’s only acting as a user-submitted directory for now.  At present, there is no personal profile information available either and having a real person behind a listing would give more authenticity.

Brands offering staple food products or ingredients require creative approaches to differentiating themselves from their competitors. With this in mind, Lurpack’s “Bake Club” and “Good Food Finder” both demonstrate how social media can generate greater brand awareness and interaction by offering a platform for customers to share their experiences, even if only indirectly connected to the product.