Sometimes you just need some vodka pasta sauce, especially when you’ve been grounded for trying to charter a helicopter with your dad’s credit card.
When Sofia Coppola’s 16-year-old daughter, Romy Mars, turn on internet Last month, after doing just that, and later recording a TikTok video to complain about her punishment while making the sauce, there was much discussion about her family dynamic. Others, however, were more interested in his food choices.
Vodka pasta sauce has been a viral favorite among social media users ever since model Gigi Hadid posted an instructional video to her Instagram stories in 2020. sparking a craze for instant food among his fans.
Two of those fans have now been revealed to be Heinz and vodka brand Absolut, who have jointly released a limited edition of their own version of the sauce, which they say stems from their commitment to innovate “at the speed of fashion trends.” social networks. ”.
Online fads fueled by a brief clip of a celebrity may seem trivial, but for retailers, especially in the highly competitive grocery sector, they are anything but. Vodka pasta sauce is far from the only viral fad to hit supermarket shelves in recent years. pasta chips, cloud breadand an alarming bubblegum seasoning called “pink sauce” have made the journey of very popular videos to main product lines.
TikTok, Instagram, and Facebook, in other words, aren’t just where the brands’ customers are, they’re also potentially where their next product ideas can be found.
“Traditionally, with product development, you would bring people together, ask them a few questions, and build products from that,” says Jamie Ray, co-founder of Buttermilk, an agency specializing in brands and influencers. “But now the speed of information is driven by social media.
“For brands, it’s about looking at what’s generating viral moments, [then thinking]Okay, the influencers are dictating that this trend is really going somewhere, we need to incorporate that into our next product line.”
A case in point is Twisted, which has just launched its own range of social media-friendly foods (think foot-long pigs in blankets on spits and lasagna-stuffed Yorkshire puddings) with frozen supermarket giant Iceland. .
Twisted began in 2016 when Tom Jackson and a friend began filming food videos from their Brixton flat and posting them to Facebook, inspired by a philosophy they sum up as “unserious food tastes great.” “And yes, within nine weeks we had a million followers on Facebook,” says Jackson.
Now a full-fledged social media company, it boasts a core team of content producers, a cookbook, a publishing arm, and 40 million followers across all social media platforms. More than 60% of those who watch say they’ve tried a Twisted recipe at home, making the crossover appeal obvious to established retailers.
“It’s not just about being viral, or at least not more. It’s tangible, you’re putting your hand inside the screen and you can actually eat it,” says Jackson. “And while the products are fun, or may sound a little weird, they taste delicious.”
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Engaging on social media can as well fail as fly, says Dom Boyd, UK managing director of information and marketing at retail analysts Kantar, who points out that a quarter of ads bought on digital platforms have no or negative effects. Interactions need to be authentic to a brand’s demographic, he says, “otherwise you’re the dad at the disco.”
And while the buying power of young digital-native consumers can be enormous, it’s often poorly understood, says Helenor Gilmour, director of information and strategy at children’s information consultancy Beano Brain. The retail influence of Generation Alpha (under 13) consumers, for example, extends well beyond viral fads, such as the Prime energy drinks promoted by YouTuber, which have caused shoppers to queue for hours for take a bottle – to influence even the car market. she says.
Recent Beano Brain research found that 69% of Gen A parents say they make better decisions about the planet because of their young children. “It is not uncommon that we hear that children influence not only the brand of the car, but also the switch to electric cars.”
Don’t assume that only young social media fans are driving product development, though, says Ellis Hawthorne, features editor at Retail Week. “You can’t rule out even baby boomers from watching viral food videos, even if they’re not on TikTok. These videos are also making their way onto Instagram and Facebook, and that generation is frequently on Facebook.” She cites the pink gin as a now mainstream product line whose development was driven by older social media users.
For most major brands, online trends are now “fully entrenched” in their product development, Hawthorne says, “but you have to remember that these viral trends are a very, very small part of their business.
“If you think about the average person who walks in and does their weekly shop, if they saw a TikTok about feta it’s not really going to be that relevant to the bottom line of these companies.”
