Millac

The challenge

Walker took Millac on before they had social media at all.

They knew what they wanted, chefs visibly using their product, but they had nothing to make it with. There were no content pillars or formats, no art direction, no design or editing style, and no way of delivering any of it.

It's a B2B cream brand selling into professional kitchens, which sounds like the least promising brief on this site.

The idea

Build the system that makes the posts.

The audience is chefs, so it all has to be something they'd stop scrolling for, like chefs they respect showing the cream working in a real kitchen.

The work

I built the content pillars from nothing.

Tastemakers photographs a few chefs a quarter in the kitchens they actually work in. It comes in three formats, a carousel of their place, a film of them making one thing, and a quick-fire Q&A with six chefs answering six questions. I decided it should run seasonally, so each quarter has its own feel and a reason to come back.

The film that sums it up best is about the phrases chefs hate hearing during service. It's a joke only chefs get, and it landed with thousands of them.

Cream School started as recipe films and turned into its own series about showing the cream works. One is all about how hard it is to get a sauce to carry acid, which nobody outside a kitchen would think to make a film about.

Pastures goes back up the supply chain to the farmers, and it's still in development. There was no graphic design style for the statics either, so we made one.

Around the pillars, I set the creative direction and decided who makes what. I set the art direction and built it out with junior creatives, worked out an editing style with the edit team so it looks the same whoever cuts it, and set up how the files get sent out, packaged so translation teams in other markets can adapt them.

I also ran a session for my team on how to write hooks.

I come up with the ideas and plan the content. Before a shoot I research the chef and find the story, which goes into the interview questions. I write the hooks and direct the edits afterwards, and I've filmed a couple myself and edited a lot of the ones on this page.

The results

It's now running in the UK, Indonesia, Thailand, MENA and on a global channel.

A brand that had no social media now has content going out in five markets. Next year we'll work on the funnel.