It's tasty, tasty, very very tasty

I quite often read through all those newsletters about new ideas and innovations and think – I wish I’d thought of that. And I am sure that there are more than a few brands these days that see something new in terms of media ideas and wish they’d got their name behind it.

Unfortunately, as much as many established brands talk about agility, many of their approval and testing processes are painfully and restrictively slow when it comes to getting something out there.

The neat new idea I’ve seen on my Facebook feed in the last couple of months is delicious little recipe videos, usually lasting less than a minute. Packed with mouth-watering appeal, these really do make it all look quick and easy. Fast food with a twist. And most of these come from Tasty or Proper Tasty, who describe them as ‘Food that’ll make you close your eyes, lean back and whisper yessss. Snack-sized videos and recipes you’ll want to try.'

Snack-sized videos. Brilliant.

Now, the interesting thing here is that behind the new brands Tasty (started July 2015, over 47m Facebook followers) and Proper Tasty (the UK version ‘in grams not cups’, launched December 2015 and an excellent demonstration of a global brand with local accents) is the digital media company BuzzFeed, better known for its clickbait headlines of the You Won’t Believe What Happens Next variety.

But BuzzFeed have been clever. They have realised that some of their Tasty audience (like me) probably isn’t into epic fails and awesomely cute fluffy kittens.

So you don’t have to like BuzzFeed (on Facebook) to like Tasty. In fact, you don’t need to go anywhere near buzzfeed.com – Tasty is tailor made for Facebook, and Pinterest, and Instagram, and Twitter, and … you can get it straight from there.

It’s not about ‘driving traffic to their website.’

And, although there are those who maintain that BuzzFeed and their like are driven by data and heavy on analysis, just looking at visitors to the food section of the main BuzzFeed site (14m, in the great scheme of things, not a lot) would not have led to this idea alone. BuzzFeed’s success is based on thorough data-crunching, yes, but combined with leaps of intuition.

It’s just a shame (I think) that a traditional food-related brand didn’t launch Tasty.

But then again, there are plenty more brilliant ideas to be had out there.