On September 15, Nigerian chef Hilda Baci and Gino, a popular culinary brand, set a Guinness World Record for the largest serving of ‘Nigerian Style Jollof Rice’. It weighed a staggering 8,780kg. Baci and her crew cooked for nine hours preparing roughly 4,000kg of rice, 500 cartons of tomato paste, 600kg of onions and 168kg of goat meat, according to the BBC.
Behind the scene, however, was a social media crew led by Nene Bejide, principal consultant at Blanche Aigle Communications. Bejide led publicity efforts for Baci’s first Guinness World Record attempt in 2023 which she won for cooking for 93 hours 11 minutes.
In this conversation, Bejide, who has been recognised as one of the top 50 influential women in marketing communication discusses the social media strategy that has now twice generated virality for an audacious Nigerian chef who’s secured the Guinness World Record twice.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
What were your objectives for the Largest Jollof Cook-a-thon campaign, and how did you tailor it for the Nigerian audience?
The objectives were tied to the objectives for the clients, Gino and Hilda Baci. It’s about putting Nigerian food on the culinary map and making Nigerian dishes more popular. Hilda wants people to be able to walk into a restaurant anywhere in Europe, and we have Nigerian meals, just like we have steak and fries in Nigeria. Then we have Gino, who is a huge culinary innovator.
You can see that from their products and how they’ve been able to infuse local flavours in tomato paste and cubes. Gino also wanted to create that popularity for it. So what we did was, we came together to say, these same people share cultural similarities and the same objectives. The idea was for us to say jollof rice is a big dish, one of the most popular foods in Nigeria, or Africa today, and tell that jollof rice story without creating any form of negative banter. But directing it towards trying to do something positive with jollof rice.
So, we ensured that there was adequate, consistent storytelling through the official spokesperson for the project, who is Chef Hilda Baci. Hilda is documenting the process, putting the human element in it, and allowing us to access the media through her personality. It helped that both Hilda and Gino have very good, positive, strong public perceptions, and that’s what actually came into play for both of them for this event.
Image Source: Nene Bejide
How did social media play a strong role in the success of the publicity and marketing that might not have been possible otherwise?
In terms of our strategy, 80 to 90% if not 95%, was social-media driven. For Hilda, it was easier, almost seamless, because she had communities. A food community, a cooking class community, and a restaurant community. So it was easy for us to drive the conversation, because those communities are people who have experienced her work. They believe in her and love her. So we did not even have to do so much in terms of amplification, because by the time she announced it to her community, every one of them who were nano-influencers, micro-influencers, macro-influencers, who were all students of a class, or customers of hers, reposted.
When we posted the content, those who reposted it made it very organic to reach other people, and easier for people to share the content on their own feeds for their own audience to see. The first few major announcements were made just to extend the reach. We probably used one or two blogs, but then after that, every other communication that went out there, we made sure we had clear messaging that was going to go through our official spokesperson, Hilda.
It was easier for us to give quick feedback and answers in real time through social media. We were media listening and media monitoring. So if someone posted something, we went into their DMs and clarified, This is incorrect information. Would you like to get more direct information about this? We can guide you. It was through social media that we gathered the media people who were going to come, and almost 300 media platforms and content creators registered [for the event]. We sent them the updates, gave them hashtags, and guidelines. Some of the content that was coming out that day was clear because they all had a focus.
There was no misinformation being shared by people who were on the ground. There were guidelines and rules. We also vetted the platforms that we had come on board and the platforms on which we put out any information, to ensure that we are passing it through the right channel. And also, that our voice is positive because the entire idea for this is to put Nigerian food on a global culinary map, and if anybody on an international platform is going to look at it, they are not going to see it beside a negative story. So it was really about just tailoring the media and using social media positively.
Were there any significant challenges your team faced with the publicity campaign, and how did you navigate those challenges?
We already had crisis comms for the project because we understand that people were going to want to milk the situation, whatever the case might be. An example would be that while we were on the ground and Hilda poured the rice in the pot, people started to tweet and say, they didn’t wash the rice. Thank God for the team. Hilda was very big on documenting. But, Hilda is busy cooking, and right there on the team, the videography team cut [footage] from the longer video when they received the rice, and they were washing and rebagging. On a few media platforms where we saw their comments, a lot of people were saying the rice was not being washed.
We just went to their DMs and said, We can see that under your comments, people are saying that the rice is not being washed. Kindly, please see the evidence that the rice was washed and repost. We did not need to tweet or officially make a statement. It was behind-the-scenes battles. The video went viral that the rice was being washed.
I don’t think we had any major challenges. It was just media listening. We had teams designated for different things; about two to three people on the back end who were not on the ground, and all they were following the hashtag, searching the story. Someone says something wrong, they DM them to let them know that, oh, people didn’t pay for this. If someone was reposting the content, but they were not getting really clear shots, we would message them to say, We can see you have an interest in this content. Would you like for us to share clearer content? We can also say that we maintained having very good quality content that went out to the media. But that’s because we kept up with people who were interested in posting, who probably were not there, and we were happy to share content with them.
How were you able to navigate the collapsing of the pot, from a PR perspective?
We never would have imagined the pot collapsing. Most times in PR, we don’t always jump into panic; we media-listen. So we already had two strong brands with strong personalities. We listened to what people were saying, and the comments were positive. We had prepared to have a quick address, but before the address, our strategy was to listen to what people were saying. Check out the comments, check out the media platforms, then coordinate how that is being projected.
Not projecting it in panic, but projecting it as it collapsed. The rice didn’t spill, zero wastage. Those are the conversations that you’d see. It’s collapsed, but the food is great. Sandwiching it with the positive. At that point, people stopped panicking, and then they continued applauding her and moved on from the pot collapsed. The communication in the press that covered the event was important. Yes, the pot collapsed, but Hilda is fine. It collapsed, but we are still on the run. It collapsed, but we got the things right. So, it made an exciting moment, like a very good, heroic story. Afterward, we noticed that we didn’t even have to have a media briefing anymore.
What is one key lesson about virality and community engagement that you learned that others looking to replicate a similar level of social media success can adopt?
I would say that it’s not necessarily from the entire campaign, because this is the second time I’m doing it. We had done the cook-a-thon two years ago, and we did this again, the second time around. What I’ll say is that other people looking to do it should have clear values, very clear objectives. With Gino, they had a flavour that they had just launched in the market, which was Asun [goat-meat flavoured] tomato paste and some seasoning cubes.
Everybody knows rice and chicken, rice and turkey, but we wanted people to know rice and goat meat. So then, we put that [Asun] flavour forward. Even though other variants of the product were being used, they made sure that the emphasis, or the kind of rice they were cooking, was focused on the Asun. Then, now almost everyone knows that there’s an Asun tomato paste and an Asun cube somewhere, and it belongs to Gino.
People who want to embark on campaigns or want to tell stories should always have a personality, as part of the things that make people feel like they are carried along. There were documentaries, there were dry runs, there were announcements, there were videos. The human element is still one of the strongest things.
Understanding the time and seasons that we are in is key before you create a strategy. What’s the time and season that people are in right now? You cannot do a certain kind of strategy now when everybody’s head is in another place. Yes, it can be a good strategy. But is that where the minds of the people are right now? Right now, we are in a cultural time and phase, and this campaign was a cultural movement. I think those are the three key things: having a clear goal, consistent human elements to the story, and then also understanding the time and phase that the media and the people are in.
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