The Solution

We engaged 11 of the UK’s best chefs, including Nathan Outlaw and Lisa Goodwin-Allen, and asked them to take Cholula and blend it with their own signature cooking style, using it to elevate and put their own unique stamp on dishes with the help of the iconic hot sauce.

We brought together the dishes in a downloadable recipe book, Fusion Mexicana, illustrating each dish with beautifully captured images of the recipes and offering useful tips on how chefs can get the best out of each dish on their menus. Demonstrating how this iconic Mexican sauce could in the hands of chefs stretch across a range of cuisines and cooking styles, clearly showing its versatility.

Five of our chefs also recreated their recipes in reel format, offering an engaging snapshot of the recipe for use on social media to encourage downloads of the recipe book.

With this standout video and static content in hand, we used our in-depth understanding of chef behaviour on social media – via exclusive jellybean proprietary research with 300 UK chefs and our SENSE social listening – to plan a promoted social campaign, including stories, posts and reels to reach our target chef audience with the most engaging content.

Boosting the posts across Instagram, LinkedIn and YouTube – key platforms for chefs as highlighted by our research – we were able to target chefs, operators and key decision makers through carefully constructed target audiences. By posting content at times which saw our audience most active – further insight we’d gleaned from our in-house research – we could also be confident that chefs would be at their most receptive.

Crucially, each post included a commanding call to action to download the recipe book, simplifying the process for busy chefs and ensuring our content ended up in front of them.

Digital media also played an important role with various assets, including HTMLs, Sponsored Stories, Digital Assets and Newsletter Banners linking back to the recipe book download.

We also supported the launch with a targeted PR campaign, as well as creating bespoke giveaway boxes, both for key customers and influencers. To boost brand awareness even further, Cholula sponsored the Craft Guild of Chefs Awards and was presented to over 900 UK chefs with a Cholula-Spiked Monkfish Second Course and literature on the table with a QR code directly linking to Fusion Mexicana.