This week Instacart cracks the content jackpot with a new annual report. Adobe helps subscribers get ugly. And a small chocolate shop curates a newsletter that delivers sweet treats.
Instacart provides data on food trends – and examines what the numbers mean for 2021
Are viral food trends jumping from social media platforms into the kitchens of the audience?
According to Instacarts in grocery stores in 2021, they do. Forty-four percent of US adults who responded to an Instacart survey (conducted by The Harris Poll) said they tried to come up with a social media food trend this year. And more than one in three (36%) said social media has changed the way they approach cooking at home.
But Instacart didn’t just take their word for it. The grocery delivery service went into its first-party data to see if people were buying for the ingredients used in trending social media food content. The answer? Yes. When baked feta noodles were a TikTok viral hit in February, orders for the recipe’s main ingredients rose 107%. Orders for salmon rice bowl ingredients rose 97% in October, while orders for Nature’s Cerealien ingredients rose 94% in March.
The Instacart report also lists hot (and not) foods across the country. Gemelli pasta, granola bars, prepared sandwiches and wraps, frozen French toast and energy drinks are on the rise. Wax-coated cheese, yeast, hand sanitizer, all-purpose flour, and disinfectant wipes are on the decline. An interactive tool allows readers to explore the trending items in cities and delivery areas across the country – and download socially friendly maps to share those stats (# 2021Delivered).
Another section of the report looks at the return to what is near “normal” by examining the trendline of prepackaged snacks (to eat on the go) during the pandemic. The Pudding Pack Index shows the aggregated sales in 10 snack categories – pudding, fruit bars, fruit snack cups, gelatin snacks, granola bars, gummy fruit snacks, pre-cut fruits, snack bars, various snack packs and yogurt bags.
WHY IT’S HOT: Instacart’s 2021 in grocery store shines in a galaxy of boring or predictable year-end reports and articles that show how your first-party customer data can help you tell great stories. And it shows how original research (the survey conducted with Harris) can be combined with customer data to tell more meaningful stories.
Hot shot: @Instacart 2021 Year in Groceries shines in a galaxy of boring and predictable #ContentMarketing at the end of the year. (via @CMIcontent) Click to tweet
Adobe adorns its newsletter with creative gifts
Adobe Creative wants to help its customers get ugly this year. So it sent the subscribers a newsletter (subject: free creative sets for winter holidays) with the offer “Ugly Christmas sweaters in a few clicks with a free Photoshop campaign”.
With this action, Photoshop customers can turn any image into a digital sweater with just a few clicks (including choosing from a range of knit sizes and pressing play). The feature comes from Pixelbudda, a design studio from Volgograd, Russia.
If you don’t like an ugly sweater, Photoshop also offers templates for cozy winter cards that can be sent digitally or printed and sent by post.
The Adobe Creative newsletter also includes non-vacation options, including creating a Risograph-style print in Photoshop.
WHY IT’S HOT: Adobe Creative enables intelligent content rendering. The newsletter provides details on how to create using the brand’s tools. And audiences always love free things, so templates and images make wonderful gifts. Bonus points for the attention to detail – note the play on words in the CTA button for the sweater activity: I want to try.
Hot Shot: Audiences Love Free Things – templates, tools, and images are great #content and great #mail subscriber gifts. See examples from the @AdobeCreate newsletter (via @CMIcontent) Click to tweet
Sweet Designs creates emails that are worth every sign
Sweet Designs, a chocolate shop near Cleveland, Ohio, delivers truffles to its fans’ inboxes every month. The newsletter does not contain chocolate, but it does contain delicious content.
A section behind the counter in each issue comes from a Q&A with an employee. In December, customer service representative Sam Sweeney talks about her almost lifelong love for chocolate, her trips around the world and her work in the store. (The newsletter links to a longer version of the interview on the company website.)
And this month’s bet you didn’t know revealed that Leonardo da Vinci was a vegetarian for humanitarian reasons – and shared a picture of the Mona Lisa with a box of vegan chocolates.
Truffle subscribers have the chance to win prizes by taking a quiz. This month, a multiple choice question asked readers to guess the most frequently purchased wine at the company’s retail location in Lakewood. Awards included a $ 25 Sweet Designs Gift Card, Katie Couric Going There memoir, and a Sweet Designs hat.
And it always ends with a fun cartoon in a section called Last Laugh.
WHY IT’S HOT: Sweet Designs’ Truffle Email Newsletter shows how well this small business understands that newsletters shouldn’t be just about promotions and sales. Instead, this chocolate shop’s newsletter is shared with its customers on many levels – with information about the interests and background of the employees, relevant trivia, and even a good laugh.
Hot Take: Truffles, a monthly # email newsletter from Cleveland-based small business Sweet Designs, shows how to get #content beyond promotions to connect with hearts (via @CMIcontent) Click to tweet
Cover photo by Joseph Kalinowski / Content Marketing Institute
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