Immediate is the home of Britain’s biggest food media brands. BBC Good Food, olive, delicious and BBC Easy Cook provide inspiration and direction for the nation’s shopper and cooks.
IM Food Group does Christmas better than anyone else. In 2019, the number of bbcgoodfood.com users hit 2.9 million in just one day, and direct traffic was up 42% across December, with much of the nation visiting for advice on how to cook a turkey or Yorkshire pudding. Newsstand sales were up 2 per cent year-on-year, and Alexa saw impressive growth, with over double the users and sessions. olive also smashed previous records with a huge 7.2 million page views in December and was up 99% YoY, with direct traffic up 102%.
During lockdown, we got to know our audiences through daily live social Q&As and our BBC Good Food Together Facebook group (now standing at almost 30k users). Now, more than ever, we know what our users want and need.
This Christmas we’ll be majoring on cooking traditional favourites from scratch across the brands, to satisfy the first-time cooks who have learned new skills – especially baking – over the past few months. We’ll also be focusing on the growing trend for home-made cocktails and low-alcohol alternatives, and keeping an eye on the healthy everyday food trend.
Our 2020 trends are centred around making, crafting and gifting, from Christmas sausage rolls and chocolate orange babka, to salted caramel fudge and mint choc chip cookies.
We know that this Christmas is going to be different, so we want to make it as magical as possible. We’re rewarding our readers’ loyalty with our ‘Meet the Magic Makers’ campaign. Kicking off in the September issue of BBC Good Food, this gives our audience the chance to win a money-can’t-buy experience with one of the members of our team or contributing editor chef Tom Kerridge, to help solve baking problems, plan tricky menus and shake up the cocktail of their dreams.
The eagerly anticipated November print issue of BBC Good Food is where we concentrate on planning ahead, and our stunning cover recipe (a closely guarded secret until publication on 29 October) guarantees to have the nation’s bakers racing for their cake tins. The recipes this year are particularly mindful of scalability – to serve two, four or more. The December issue continues the Good Food tradition of helping with more last-minute preparations. olive is also serving up a two-part Christmas in print. Both issues are stuffed with inspirational must-make Christmas recipes, such as domino potatoes and Negroni meringue pie.
Our digital content expands on our print themes, with the added value of extensive guides for preparing and cooking Christmas meals, collections of every recipe you may need for any occasion, plus extra, last-minute on-trend recipes written in the run up to Christmas.
Building on the growth and success of both, BBC Good Food and olive are planning a series of entertaining and useful Christmas podcasts and videos in the run up to the festivities, featuring recipes, tip and techniques to make this Christmas magical.
This year, across the IM Food Group, we have expanded our pool of contributors in line with IM’s commitment to diversity and inclusion, from recipe writers to columnists. Baking has been a huge trend in 2020, and our new contributor Benjamina Ebuehi will share new recipes for Stir-up Sunday – a traditional mincemeat and an amaretto & cherry Christmas cake. Columnist Melissa Thompson recommends gifts made by food businesses that have built charity or support into their fabric.
BBC Good Food has a total UK brand reach of 17.5 million and is number 1 on Google for food-related searches. Add in olive, delicious and BBC Easy Cook, and IMfood is the biggest food media brand in the UK reaching 20 million people over the festive period.
Our recent audience research into Christmas planning for 2020 shows:
• 97% of our audience has some responsibility for Christmas food shopping
• Two-thirds are in charge of the food planning and preparation with the bulk starting their planning in November
• 2020 sees them planning to spend the same as previous years, but are more likely to buy online
• But they will still make on average 3 trips for Christmas food shopping
• Nearly half say they are much less likely to eat out this Christmas than previous years, which means more eating and drinking at home!
For more information on food opportunities including festive hub sponsorships, festive recipe content creation, podcast collaboration, digital takeovers and digital advent calendar sponsorship, please contact Liz Reid.
Also, follow our IMfood Linked In page to keep up to date with our brands.
Merry Boursin!
Boursin came to us with the aim of getting indulgent cheese shoppers to serve Boursin to their guests, by making Boursin the unmissable and irresistible hero treat cheese.
Christmas time is all about indulgent hosting for the olive audience, which is why it was chosen as the perfect partner for Boursin. olive’s mix of imaginative but achievable recipes made it the ideal platform to inspire home cooks and hosts with Boursin at Christmas. Using our native proposition allowed us to create 3 innovative, delicious and highly shareable Boursin recipes. Each recipe focused on a different audience, Vegetarian Christmas, Christmas Canapes and Christmas Baking, and consisted of a recipe still, video and copy.
The campaign had amazing results:
Over the next six weeks we’re giving you the chance to win some brilliant early Christmas presents.
This week we have a Fortnum & Mason Foodhall hamper worth £125 up for grabs.
Plus, all entries into our six weekly competitions are automatically entered into an extra special prize draw to win a £1,000 Secret Escapes voucher.
How to enter
Answer the question below and submit your email address. Someone with the correct answer will be picked at random. The competition closes at 23:59 on 20th September 2020.
This competition closes at 23:59 on 20th September 2020. Entries received after this date will not be counted. See full terms & conditions