Betty Crocker podcasts connect with younger cooks

Big G podcasts push cookbooks

Betty Crocker wants a piece of your earbuds

The venerable General Mills brand has issued a series of podcasts — some of them in Spanish — to target a younger and bilingual generation.

Podcasts are digital audio programs that anyone with a computer or digital portable player can download and listen to at their convenience. The technology, represented commonly by Apple Computer Inc.’s iPod players, is wildly popular with young adults who sport the ubiquitous white iPod earbuds almost everywhere they go.

Executives at Golden Valley-based General Mills Inc. created the podcasts in house to promote two Betty Crocker cookbooks that were published in September. The company issued the latest version of the classic Betty Crocker Cookbook and its first bilingual cookbook, Cocina Betty Crocker.

So far, the results are promising. Since their launch in late November, the podcasts have been downloaded more than 10,000 times — enough traffic to land them in the Top 100 List of food podcasts on Apple iTunes.

„This is somewhat of an experimentation because we don’t have a lot of experience with this,“ said Kim Walter, director of book and online publishing for General Mills’ Equity Enterprises publishing division. „So far we’ve gotten some wonderful feedback.“

While executives say they’re not quite sure how they will proceed with the venture, one podcasting expert said the company should be encouraged by the initial popularity of the podcasts and continue to create new ones.

„The tendency is to dip your toe in it,“ said Michael Keliher of St. Paul-based Provident Partners, a marketing firm that’s dabbled in podcasting for about a year. „But if they continue to see numbers like that, I think they’ll post more frequently. It’s not something you can half do. You have to put some muscle behind it to make it worthwhile.“

Learning to cook
One of the podcasts, titled Betty Crocker Red Spoon Diaries, ties into the Betty Crocker Cookbook, which executives affectionately refer to as „Big Red.“ While that book practically sells itself to baby boomers, executives wanted to find a better way to reach out to echo boomers — the nearly 80 million people born between 1982 and 1995.

The podcast, which consists of three segments so far, plays off of another initiative General Mills launched in September with Heidi Losleben, a cookbook editor for the company. A self-proclaimed clueless cook, Losleben spent four months learning how to cook by using Big Red. She recorded her triumphs and misadventures in an online journal or blog, called Red Spoon Diaries, then recorded similar podcasts.

People said they enjoyed watching me learn,“ Losleben said. She’s received regular e-mails from readers that wanted more information about the recipes and her experience.

The other General Mills podcast, Cocina Betty Crocker, is in Spanish and seeks to promote the company’s first bilingual cookbook, also called Cocina Betty Crocker. The podcast host, Ursula Mejia-Melgar, shares recipes from the book as well as tips and other ideas in seven- or eight-minute segments. Three segments are posted so far. Mejia-Melgar, a General Mills employee, is actually one of the people who convinced marketing executives to try the new technology.

Cutting edge though the podcasts may be, Luis Fitch, principal of the Uno advertising agency in Minneapolis, said he’s not sure how well a Spanish-language podcast will be received.

„I don’t think there is a big percentage of Hispanics using iPods,“ Fitch said. „You’d have to be pretty hip and acculturated.“

But that’s exactly the audience that General Mills is trying to reach.

And Betty Crocker is the one to reach them, executives say.

„Betty Crocker is not just a brand, she’s a person,“ Walter said. „Her persona is so expandable it enables us … to try these different channels of communication and reach out in different ways.“

Fréttaskot

Örn Garðarsson