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‘Whose taking the horse to France?”
“You can put a bit of butter on the spuds, André.”
When it comes to memorable ads, there are few (bar some Guinness classics) that hold up like Kerrygold.
Those clever advertising connoisseurs created lines so iconic, they are ingrained in our memories like Leaving Cert quotes.
While the taste of Irish butter has stayed the same over the years, those marketing departments have moved with the times and embraced the world of social media.
In doing so, they’ve put our green pastures and grass fed cows on the map in a whole new way.
Recently, there has been a surge of celebrity figures – including Kourtney Kardashian and Oprah Winfrey – using Kerrygold butter in their online cooking videos, which they post to Instagram and TikTok. When you consider that Kardashian has 224 million instagram followers and Winfrey sits at 22 million, that’s a lot of eyes on Irish butter.
In fact, the search bar for Kerrygold butter on TikTok alone has 22.9 million views, with thousands of videos from social media users – particularly Americans – cooking with the product and making ‘butter boards’ (one of the latest trends in entertaining).
Were you even aware that there was such a thing as a butter influencer?
Building connections
Brian Cleere, global creative director of Kerrygold, is from Kilkenny but based in Chicago.
In September, Kerrygold curated an all-expenses-paid trip to Ireland for a group of social media savvy Americans. He says, “All their followers went on the journey with them, where we showed them first-hand the Irish farms where the butter’s cream is sourced. This stirred up a considerable amount of interest as their viewers enviously followed their delicious meals and activities.
“Ten years ago, social media marketing wasn’t as prevalent as it is now,” he explains. “In the past, we brought people who worked within traditional publications, but due to the rise of TikTok and Instagram, we now bring a range of different people.”
However, Brian doesn’t like to use the term ‘influencer’. He prefers to say ‘a person who is influential’ when speaking about positive media figures.
“Building connections with people who are influential is one of our most important brand building strategies,” he says.
When creating content for online, it is important to research what works best in the market at any given time.
“We have to evolve with the platforms and algorithms that people want to consume,” he says. “For example, in Germany, we have an extremely engaged older audience that has more of a presence on Facebook – so we do most of our social media marketing there.”
However, at the crux of all that brand building there needs to be integrity.
The platforms might be very different but the core message isn’t far from those 80s ads we love.
“In a lot of our communications and content, we make sure it’s functional and that we can engage people emotionally,” he says.
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