Involving your business in any hot topic or national event can be a great way to show relevance and appear current. It can also be a fantastic way to increase exposure and get more eyes on your brand for a minimal effort. If there's one trend everyone likes to jump on every year, The Great British Bake Off will be up there.
For ten weeks at the start of every autumn, the UK goes Great British Bake Off crazy when the popular show makes its annual return.
During this time many people will be using the #GBBO hashtag on social media and will be more likely to engage with any content about Bake Off as the excitement grows.
There are obvious connections to be made for hospitality and food & drink brands, however, even a brand with no immediate connection to The Great British Bake Off can take advantage of this excitement and get their business noticed online.
The easiest and quickest way to piggyback on the show's excitement is to discuss it with other online users simply. Post questions such as “Who are you rooting for?” along with the hashtag #GBBO. Many brands are posting general content but relating it to The Great British Bake Off, and using the branded hashtag as hashtags can be a great way to connect you to a bigger audience!
It is however important to ensure you're still adding value, and not noise and that you're still putting your audience first. There's nothing worse than posting content that disengages completely and results in a loss of followers, so ensure there is some value being added with your related posts.
If there’s a stand-out moment in the show that everyone’s talking about (such as Ruby’s collapsing cake in 2018) then publish a light-hearted post about it. Keep an eye on the hashtag, see what everyone’s talking about and recreate what the entire UK is saying in your own words. People scrolling through the hashtag may then notice your brand and engage with the content!
With twelve contestants, the likelihood of someone being from your county is pretty high. You might even get someone from a local town or village; if that’s the case, use your connection with them to get involved in the conversation! In recent years, The University of Sheffield has been shown its support for Rotherham-based Rahul, an engineering researcher at the institution.
The longer the local contestant stays in the competition, the bigger the buzz you’ll see surrounding that person. That buzz will make people engage with content connected to the individual, so take advantage of that and use your local connection to get fans of that particular contestant to notice you.
If you don’t have any contestants local to your business, that’s fine, there may still be ways to link your brand to what’s going on in the show. Perhaps even your customer base may overlap with the target audience of The Great British Bake Off.
Independent online book retailer, A Great Read, has the right idea by selecting a product that relates to the content of the show and posting about it during a time people will have this topic on their minds.
Similarly, On Trend Kitchens have been using the current baking craze to plug their kitchen products.
Two very different retailers successfully related Bake Off to their business!
If you feel there really isn’t any way to link your products and services to Bake Off, don’t write it off completely - create the link!
You could get your employees to have a Bake Off amongst themselves and post about their bakes. Beadles Jaguar in Watford is a car dealership so they have no direct link to baking. However, they recognise the importance of piggybacking national trends so they have created the ‘Great Beadles Bake Off’ to raise money for charity. They’ve even created their own Bake-Off style imagery to accompany the content!
Bud Light are another brand with no obvious link to anything baking related but have been inspired by the famous Hollywood Handshake to create content allowing them to jump on the Bake Off hype.
So, as you can see, many brands are piggybacking the Great British Bake Off (#GBBO) craze in their own various ways. There’s nothing stopping you from getting involved if you think it will get people to notice your brand and encourage users to engage with your content.
You'll receive an email update every 2 weeks with insight and advice to support you in your digital marketing journey. We treat your email address with care, and you can unsubscribe with just a click.