Building your brand on social media: Lessons from the film Chef

Chef (2014) tells the story of a professional restaurant chef named Carl Casper (Jon Favreau), who following a bad review from a food blogger, goes back to his roots to save both his career and the relationships around him.

I enjoyed Chef as a film, but it also has plenty to teach us about promoting a new brand when you have no real resources. Here’s seven strategies I’ve learned from the film:

Start Small

One thing I appreciate about Chef’s take on social media is that Carl’s 10-year-old son, Percy (Emjay Anthony), performs all of them from his iPhone — a phone his dad doesn’t even seem to know he has. 

This is a great way to get started with any social media account. People want to see what you are up to. Don’t be an egg on twitter. Take a picture on your smartphone, and let people see what you are about.

For many professional endeavours, people recommended not having a selfie as a profile picture, but a selfie could be appropriate for your brand. If not, you could easily pass your phone to a friend, find a suitable background wall, and shoot a few headshots. 

It doesn’t have to be a professional quality photo to start with. Most smartphones have a good enough camera to take a clear image at a good resolution that works for most social media channels.

In Chef, the food truck business Percy promotes for his dad turns up in the film fully branded, logoed, and ready to go. To that end, there’s nothing we can learn here about putting together the visual aspects of the brand or choosing its name — El Jefe, meaning “the boss” or “the chief” (a name Carl also has tattooed on his knuckles). That said, Percy catches on quickly that the key to Carl’s story is the road trip he’s taking, which he captures along the way with tweets, pictures, and Vine videos.

You don’t need to make a big splash with your brand or product. Put up what you have, start using your new branded voice online, and see where it takes you. You can always tweak it along the way, and your first followers may be your most loyal.

How Not to Tweet

Percy sets up Carl’s Twitter account, and misunderstanding how the platform works, Carl’s first tweet gains him over 1,000 followers. But it also puts him into an online spat with the food blogger that reviewed him.

Whilst a good online burn has worked well for some brands — and in Chef, it certainly shows Carl has passion for what he does — it isn’t always best to start off with or consistently deal out negative or controversial content. 

Take a good look at what you are trying to build and who your audience is. Is there a place in that space for you to be negative, cheeky, or risque? The answer is usually no. Stick to building an upbeat positive community around you to get you off to a good start.

Be Personal and Passionate

Being passionate about what he does is what initially gets Carl into trouble. His Twitter rant aimed at the food blogger went viral for all the wrong reasons.

However, Carl’s entire food truck business is based around him and his love of food. This makes the story he’s telling easy to access, personal, and compelling. Add in his redemption after his online video and spat with the food blogger, and you’ve got a brand story that will take you far.

Think about what your story is. What got you here, and where will it take you? When people first find you, they want to know what you’re all about. Taking time whilst you are starting out to share what is driving you and your business is a great way to bring in followers and make them part of what you are doing.

Choose Your Channels

“Carl Casper is already taken, how about Chef Carl Casper?” After setting up a Twitter account, Percy uses it along with Vine and Instagram to post and repost his dad’s content for the food truck.

Twitter is a great way to listen to, join in with, and shape conversations in your area of business and with your audience. Work on it in that order to start with: listen to what other people are saying about your product. Join in the conversations they are having, occasionally replying to start a chat or thank them for their interest. Then, use your new content to start to shape the conversation that you want to have.

Look at the content you have or could easily create as you go along, and then look at what channels you want to focus on to showcase that content. If you are working in a visual area, look at channels like Pinterest and Instagram. Share behind-the-scenes videos of what you are up to — short snapshots to Snapchat or Vine, longer videos to YouTube, or think about live streaming with Periscope or Meerkat. 

Want a place for longer blog pieces or FAQs? Check out Medium or think about having a blog on your website.

You don’t need to be on every social media channel. Choose the ones that will work easily and quickly around the content you have, and build those with a great following. You can always add more later as your content or strategy evolves.

Don’t Underestimate the Power of the Selfie

A fan asks for a selfie with Carl, then another and another. This goes on for quite a while. They two take various shots, and the fan gets more and more into the experience suggesting more ridiculous ideas.

But for all the mocking of selfie sticks and selfies themselves, a casual visual representation of your life can go a long way. Meeting a new partner company, looking at new offices, a first glimpse of a new product: put yourself in the picture to show people you’re involved with every step.

Use of Hashtags and Geotags

Again, our digital native Percy sets up and runs the accounts for the food truck, so he has a clear idea of what each channel can do and how to use it to its full potential.

With Twitter, he creates and uses hashtags for the food truck to connect with new followers (e.g., #ElJefeFoodTruck). Spend some time searching for keywords around your brand and business. Do hashtags already exist? 

If the hashtags exist, are they ones you want to use and be associated with? This is important — if people are using a certain hashtag to complain, you likely don’t want your content to feature alongside theirs in a search. Create your own hashtags based on your product or business model. I’m a big fan of capitals in hashtags to make them clear and easy to read. #YouKnowWhatIMean

When the food truck pulls up to a location, Percy takes a quick snap and geotags the picture to ensure everyone knows where to find the truck. This is a great idea if you are a pop-up business or use multiple locations.

Simple tricks like this are great ways of expanding your reach and finding new followers who are looking for people or businesses like yours based on keywords or location.

Segment Your Audience and Tailor Content

Percy works his magic throughout the film to let everyone know what is going on with the food truck, and he executes his self-appointed role as social media manager with real flare. However, he saves his best content work for his favourite audience — his Dad. At the end of Chef, Percy makes a video with the program One Second Everyday and sends it only to his Dad —  to show him how much the food truck trip has meant to him.

As your followers start to grow, learn about who they are. Connect with them. Check out their accounts and see who else they follow, what their interests are, what has brought them to you. Learn from this, and put it back into your strategy for your business to keep things fresh and relevant for your audience — and mostly to show them some well-deserved appreciation.

If you liked this article then please give it a like, share or comment. I create content and work on social strategy. You can follow me on Medium or Twitter or connect with me on LinkedIn.

This blog was feature in the publication The Outtake on Medium. The Outtake features smart, accessible, and sometimes very personal writing on film and television, classical and contemporary. Written (mostly) by people who study this stuff for a living. You can find them on Medium, Twitter and Facebook.