Why Kraft? Well in September last year it announced its content generates around 1.1bn impressions a year and four times better return on investment (ROI) than advertising. 

That’s a pretty impressive result, so it must be doing something right. 

Rather than focus on individual brands under the Kraft umbrella (there are a ridiculous number of them), I’m going stick to content published under the main group’s name. Otherwise we’d be here all day. 

Kraftrecipes.com

Kraft’s biggest hub of content is Kraftrecipes.com. The site features a huge range of recipes and ideas that relate to Kraft’s products.

Kraft Recipes

Kraft recipes

There is also a blog page that has some decent content with lots of lovely food imagery. 

Kraft blog

As a side note, Kraft needs to seriously consider toning down the number of display ads on its recipe site. I found it almost unbearable to navigate because there were so many. 

Twist that dish

Kraft recently rolled out the ‘Twist that dish’ section of its site. This hub of content is designed to give people budget meal ideas by creating variations on popular recipes. 

Twist that dish

If you click on the recipes you get a list of ingredients, and you can purchase these directly from the recipe page. Where you see a $ symbol that means there is a deal available on that product. 

Kraft mocha brownies

Content from Twist that dish also makes its way onto YouTube in snappy little clips of only 15 seconds or so, such as this BLT Mac recipe.

Youtube

As you can imagine, most of what Kraft puts out on YouTube is recipe-related. There’s lots of playful content such as this burger recipe animation made to look like a computer game (which I happen to quite like). 

Aside from the more fun stuff, Kraft has also gone for the whole ‘food porn’ approach in some of its videos. This pizza recipe below is a good example.

But my favourite thing Kraft does on YouTube, partly because I’m an absolute fiend for the stuff, is its channel dedicated exclusively to peanut butter. 

The animations are quirky and look fantastic, and the recipes themselves look pretty tasty as well. Clearly that’s a winning combination because the video below has clocked up 1.2m views. 

Here’s another one where the peanut butter balls fall in love with each other, presumably just before being forcibly separated and then eaten by their creator. It’s a cruel and savage world. 

Twitter

Kraft’s Twitter feed is, again, very recipe-focused.  It is full of eye-catching imagery such as the American flag no-bake cake below.

Kraft’s Twitter feed also contains seasonal content such as this recipe idea for the 4th of July. 

Or this s’more brownie recipe that takes advantage of the impending camping season. 

This kind of stuff is always going to get shares, and the food does look genuinely delicious.

There are also some tweets containing some nice visual content relating to specific products. I particularly like this one below for Gevalia iced coffee.

Vine

I’m not sure about Kraft’s Vine efforts. Its Kraftmacandcheese account seems to be mostly populated by clips of Vanilla Ice dancing in a supermarket. 

No, really. 

There are zero posts on its main Vine page despite having more than 6,000 followers, which doesn’t look particularly great from a brand image point of view. I guess they thought it would be a good idea at one point.

Instagram

I couldn’t find an Instagram account for Kraft other than its Canada-based ‘What’s Cooking’ page. But the content on that account is, to be fair, absolutely brilliant.

There’s plenty of eye-catching photography, and the whole ‘food porn’ angle that works so well on Instagram is clearly present here. 

Kraft Instagram page

Conclusion: making the ordinary appealing 

I went into this research session with very little knowledge of Kraft’s content output other than the statistic I mentioned at the start of the article. 

To be honest, it’s a bit of a mixed bag. Kraft is clearly putting out some fantastic content on some channels, but severely lacking in others where it could potentially publish some really nice stuff (Vine, for example). 

But I think the key to Kraft’s content success is this…

It isn’t known for gourmet products, but by taking its very ordinary products and presenting them in an attractive way through recipes and colourful imagery, those products suddenly become much more appealing.

On top of that, Kraft clearly knows its market and knows what people want from their food, as demonstrated by the success of its ‘Twist That Dish’ content.