During these new and challenging times it is important for brands to be agile in their approach to business and now, perhaps more than ever, this very much includes social media. Bakery brand St Pierre has shown that by adapting to the mood of a nation under lockdown and creating content that reflects customers’ needs in these challenging times, it is possible to grow engagement and support brand growth.
Heather Burgess, Marketing Manager at St Pierre, explains: “The health crisis has had an immense impact on our way of life and lockdown for many has meant that food become far more important. Food has become our moments of bonding and comfort, as a way of showing love and care, and mealtimes have become the clock in our days. Extra time at home means more consumers are taking a greater interest in how they prepare and serve their food and are looking for easy ways they can treat themselves and their families using everyday store cupboard ingredients. As our day to day lives began to rapidly change earlier this year, we recognised that people were looking for mealtime inspiration, as well as advice and cheerful entertainment, so we adapted our social media strategy to suit. The St Pierre tone has always been light-hearted, and we found that adapting our content to reflect the mood of our consumers kept our followers engaged and entertained, whilst still educating them on the brand and our range of products. As a result, our reach levels increased by over 1,000% on Facebook and Instagram in April.
“Since the beginning of the health crisis we have focused on posting Instagrammable recipe ideas, as well as engaging polls and quizzes, which our followers have enjoyed participating in. We launched a series of exciting campaigns that promote our Parisian heritage. One campaign, French Friday’s, has been a really popular way of engaging with our followers as it has allowed them to embrace Parisian living from afar through French music, films, art and recipes – creating a few moments of much-needed escapism.
“We hosted a competition in April to win a subscription to Disney+, as we knew our fans would be looking for ways to keep themselves and their families entertained at home during lockdown. This approach was a huge success and the competition helped to generate over 6000 new page likes across Facebook and Instagram.
“As consumers are still adjusting to the new ‘normal’, we will continue to monitor and adapt our content and messaging with a focus on summer. The BBQ season is a key time of year for St Pierre, and even though the health crisis undoubtedly means BBQ events will be on a smaller scale this summer, we can still inspire people to elevate their garden BBQs with ‘gourmet’ style burgers and hot dogs in buttery brioche buns at home, as well as continuing to celebrate French Fridays of course.”
This spring, St Pierre announced a brand refresh and its first multiple listing in Tesco. To support this, the brand released visually-engaging content across its channels to unveil the new branding, which reached over 1,115,000 people. St Pierre also celebrated National Brioche Day in May by creating a brand video that celebrates how food can bring loved ones together and show that we care – the video has already had over 40,000 views.
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