The Bake-off Effect
Graph highlighting how significant the Bake-Off season has become from 2011 - 2014 with sales of baking products (thisismoney.co.uk 2014)
The Bake Off Effect has incorporated social media into a cooking show to effectively engage the public in a baking fashion marketing frenzy. This trend created a “halo effect”, where there was an upturn shift in purchasing behaviours across the baking fashion category (Manson and Nguyen 2015).
In 2010 Britain erupted in a baking trend after the show “The Great British Bake Off” was aired. The analyst Neil Saunders said: “The British public have rediscovered the art,”; “It’s one of those activities that’s both enjoyable and practical in that it can save households money” (Rainey 2013). The show reached its peak viewing at 15 million with the season 6 finale (Clark 2016). Therefore, it was an opportune time for marketers to take advantage of the interest in the show and market baking fashion products and equipment. This is what the Co-operative Electrical did with the Kenwood appliances.
The client of the Bake Off, Co-operative Electrical, described how they understood the trend that the Great British Bake Off was establishing in consumers. Therefore, they decided to use a dual-screening (television and online) and real-time approach (connecting on social media on real-time) to target audiences in their campaigns. In this way, the campaign harnessed the power of modern technology. The Co-operative Electrical were advertising Kenwood products, and saw a massive 240% increase in searches for the product on Amazon (Manson and Nguyen 2015).
Many supermarket brands decided to stock up on baking equipment and products prior to the showing of the Great British Bake Off, from experience of previous years. According to the grocery chain Budgens, there are two key consumer types: those who will “bake it”, and those who will “fake it”. To please both consumers the store stocked up on quality ingredients, cake mixes and ready-made icing (Talking Retail 2015).
Among these supermarkets was Tesco. They outline how the season of the show has become almost as popular as Pancake day and Christmas in terms of the baking purchasing behaviours of consumers, predicting that each year the demand for cake decorations during the bake-off season increased by 10% from 2013 to 2014 (thisismoney.co.uk. 2014).
In these ways the show the Great British Bake Off has influenced the consumer purchasing behaviours in the fashion marketing area.
