Secret ingredients of Amul's content strategy to create world's biggest live recipe show

On April 17, 2020, Amul started its experiment of live recipes with two chefs on Amul’s Facebook page (https://www.facebook.com/amul.coop/).  It has been more than nine months since then and by January 19, 2021 the brand completed 2,000 live shows. It is the longest and biggest live recipe event in the world.

Amul started this activity in the middle of the lockdown period as the sentiments of the hotel, restaurants, and catering (HORECA) industry were down because of the uncertainties due to the pandemic and the future outlook was also projected to be bleak. Amul wanted to show solidarity with the industry and assure them of things returning to normal once the lockdown opened gradually across the country.

The objective was very simple. To connect the chefs who are at home under lockdown and give them the opportunity to showcase their culinary skills and connect with homemakers seeking innovative ways to cook simple home recipes for themselves and their families. This would help the chefs remain connected with the customers.

Also, instead of recipe videos that are shot, edited and presented, Amul wanted to do live recipes to give a feeling that the content is created freshly, in front of their own eyes and also seen by multiple people simultaneously to create a group feeling, which is more soothing in such times when people feel lonely and isolated.

Live cooking is a very immersive experience and facilitates live Q&A. This conversation between chefs and their audience has been the most engaging part of the activity. This has made Amul’s show very unique.

To achieve these objectives, Facebook scored over other platforms such as YouTube, Instagram or Twitter.

Amul has been on Facebook since 2009 and has over two million followers. It is also active and popular on Instagram and Twitter.

For more than nine months, chefs from all leading hotel chains across India have participated in the live recipe shows. Chefs from more than 50 countries of the world have participated in exclusive live shows through Facebook Live.

Apart from Michelin Star Chefs, Amul had the privilege of hosting Chef Thomas Gugler, the President of WorldChef, an association of chefs’ societies, a body of one million chefs from more than 11 countries, who has done four live shows, including a ‘Battle with Chef’ event, in which 66 chefs from 30 countries across five continents participated in what was a first-time event even for them.

The brand also organised India’s first 24-hour non-stop Facebook live cooking marathon with 200+ chefs and reached over 22 million users in the 24-hour period from September 5, 2 pm till September 6, 2 pm.

Over the last 277 days, Amul has done a total of 2,000 live recipe shows on Amul’s Facebook Page and owns several innovative formats like:

1. Simple homemade recipes: The sessions start at 12 noon till 7 pm and a session is scheduled every hour – 12 noon, 1 pm, 2 pm, 3 pm, 4 pm, 5 pm, 6 pm and 7 pm. The brand completed 1,389 shows in this segment of Facebook Live.

• Midnight snacking: To cater to the late-night binging millennial audience of youth, Amul started midnight snacking live sessions at 11 pm and so far completed 250 shows. This show has become an instant hit, which also shows the popularity and usage of Facebook across all day.

• Ice cream recipes on Facebook Live: Amul also started ice cream recipes on its ice cream FB page (https://www.facebook.com/icecream.amul) from May 2, 2020, with two shows every day at 12.30 pm and 3.30 pm and have done 127 shows there to date.

• Cook with the chef: It had 100-977 chefs cooking simultaneously along with the chef, all shown live on Facebook. They extended the format to create a cook along with live session with multiple chefs. These events were aired at 11 am and the brand completed 40 shows. The show on June 14 with Chef Virender had 977 chefs participating on its 1,000-member Zoom account, which was streamed live on FB.

• Battle the chef: President of World Chef Association Thomas Gugler had 66 chefs from 30 countries and five continents making innovative recipes from the ingredients he had selected and all were cooking live making recipes as per their local styles.

• Live from large kitchens: Amul did one live from AkshayPatra Jaipur and the process of cooking 40,000 rotis in an hour has to be seen to be believed.
• Special World Milk Day celebration: This format had chefs making milk-based products on June 1 to celebrate this day.
• Taste of India Special Day: The chefs from all 28 states of India cooked their traditional recipes — a very successful show conducted by Chef Sanjay on June 16.
• A talk show on the goodness of dairy versus analogues: The show was hosted by Amul’s MD with Michelin Star Chef Suvir Saran and leading experts.

• The success of Amul live has been replicated in Amul Arabia and Amul Tamil Nadu, Amul Bangla and Amul Telugu Facebook pages wherein international and Indian cuisines are showcased in Arabic, Tamil, Bangla and Telugu to the native audiences.

• 24-hour non-stop live cooking session: Amul hosted India’s first 24-hours non-stop cooking marathon on September 5, 2020, 2 pm till September 6, 2020, 2 pm with 48 sessions by 200+ chefs from 26 cities and four countries.

• National Milk Day activation: A 16-hour non-stop marathon cooking session from 6 am-10 pm with chefs from 30 states across India on National Milk Day on November 26, 2020.

• A Limca Book record was attempted by Chef Varinder Singh Rana as his team from CT University made 1101 Phirnis made with Amul Milk.

The results:

Ever since the activity started, Amul’s Facebook page followers increased from 1.4 million to 2 million. The followers on the ice cream FB page increased by 54,000 accounts. The brand has cumulatively increased over seven lakh followers across our Facebook pages.

At an average duration of 45-50 minutes per recipe, Amul created more than 90,000 minutes (1500+ hours) of original content.

According to stats available till January 19, 2021, Amul reached 1,278 million accounts on FB over 277 days with an average daily reach of almost six million FB users, continuously for nine months.

The total viewership of its content on Facebook has been 163 million minutes over the last 277 days. So, on an average, six lakh minutes of Amul recipe content is being viewed on Facebook daily.

Almost every live recipe video has got an average of half-a-million views, with some even crossing 4.5 million views.

FB stats indicate that the brand has reached 96 million unique FB accounts in India with a strong reach in major cities — Mumbai 5.8 million, Delhi 5.5 million, Kolkata 4.9 million, Ahmedabad 3.3 million, Bangalore2.9 million, Chennai 2.3 million, Surat 2.1 million, Pune 1.8 million, Lucknow 1.1 million, Hyderabad 970,000 among the top metros and large and small towns across the country, indicating a strong FB connect across the second-most populous country in the world.

In addition to 96 million FB accounts in India, Amul reached more than 1.5 million FB accounts in US, 900,000 in Canada, 600,000  in Saudi Arabia, 420,000  in Kuwait, 340,000  in Pakistan, 250,000 in UAE, 200,000 in UK and Brazil, 64,000 in Bangladesh 58,000 in Canada, 57000 in Australia, 51,000 in Nepal, 34,000 in Malaysia,  27,000 each in Philippines, Qatar, Singapore and Oman, 26,000 in South Africa, 24000 in Germany,  21,000 in Sri Lanka, Myanmar and New Zealand, 17,000 each in Thailand and Indonesia, 16,000 each in Mauritius, Italy, Nigeria, France, Bahrain, Kenya in the last nine months.