PepsiCo?s Quaker Oats brand is tapping into consumers? love of breakfast with a month-long mobile marketing blitz that includes daily recipes posted to its social media channels as well as collaborations with lifestyle and culinary bloggers.

Quaker Oats? Oatober campaign ? which plays on autumnal fans? excitement for the month ? will distribute a trove of recipes, influencer-led content, events and videos on social media channels, which are typically frequented by cooking enthusiasts looking for meal inspiration. Quaker is set to introduce more than 60 pieces of new content for the campaign designed specifically for Pinterest, Instagram, Facebook and Tumblr.

?Leading brands are telling stories; they?re embracing individuals with content that service individual needs, content that inspires them and triggers their imagination,? said Michael Becker, managing partner at mCordis. ?Once inspired, the individual may then be enticed to take action, in which case a timely and relevant offer or promotion may be just the incentive they need; but the inspiration should come first. 

?Social media is a wonderful medium to engage people since that is where they have their own conversations,? he said. ?Strategic brands leverage social media to bring the individual back to the brand's properties and start building a direct, over-the-top, relationship with the individual.

?This is a strategy we refer to as ?establishing the owned media causeway.??

Digitizing the breakfast staple
Quaker is ushering in the fall season by introducing a playful name for one of the most popular months of the year ? Oatober. In a bid to celebrate the versatility of its flagship product and tap into individuals? love of breakfast staples, the consumer packaged goods brand is rolling out a slew of recipes and videos that will delineate different ways to enjoy oatmeal.

Quaker is featuring one new recipe each day on its social channels as well as on its campaign microsite, www.quakeroatober.com. The recipes span a range of meal types, such as apple cinnamon overnight oats for breakfast and turkey spinach meatloaf for dinner.

Consumers can visit Quaker?s Instagram, Facebook, Twitter and Pinterest channels to view the daily recipe or check the mobile-optimized microsite for a full, aggregated list of featured recipes.

Instagram users can tap on Quaker?s bio to access the ingredient list for each recipe, while microsite visitors can locate the ingredients simply by clicking on the recipe?s photo.

CPG brands may find social media to be the most optimal hosting medium for their recipe-centric campaigns, due to the influx of cooking fans that frequent these channels for meal inspiration and ingredient substitution suggestions.

More of these marketers are also exploring various paid media advertising opportunities in an effort to get their recipes noticed by target customers.

For instance, Old El Paso was one of the first marketers to leverage Pinterest's Promoted Video unit by targeting food enthusiasts with a simple recipe and animating the preview as they scrolled back and forth, resulting in four times more memorability than a non-video ad (see story).

Churning up social engagement
Quaker?s Oatober campaign will also see the brand tap a plethora of social influencers, such as culinary and lifestyle bloggers, to post new recipes and other content likely to resonate with their significant followings.

Fans can follow along by visiting the #Oatober hashtag each day.

Leveraging social influencers is slowly becoming a must-have strategy for any marketer seeking to reach a mobile-connected millennial audience.

Quaker Oats has also promoted one-to-one mobile conversations with its customers in previous campaigns.

Earlier this year, Quaker Oats rolled out Promoted Tweets that prompted consumers to visit a campaign microsite on their smartphones where they could combine ingredients to design a new oatmeal flavor, showcasing how marketers can augment awareness by asking fans for direct input on products (see story).

?Cooking and recipe interactions are really popular with the target demographic that Quaker Oats is attracting,? said Marci Troutman, CEO of SiteMinis. ?Using influencers and bloggers that are in tune to these household efforts in this way gains follows and consumers more quickly and effectively.

?People that cook for their family (especially younger demographics), are especially engaged in social media and love to interact and share positive results,? she said. ?This creates target marketing results that usually have a lower cost for positive consumer brand identification and long-term brand relationships, as long as Quaker Oats keeps up this type of effort.

?One-off marketing deployments are only modestly effective at gaining customers ? ongoing and developmental efforts grow exponentially.?