Since the pandemic, it’s been more challenging to get face time with journalists and influencers. However, their appetite for meeting IRL is returning if the offering is sufficiently compelling.
We organised a three-day experience with our client Farchioni, producers of Il Casolare olive oil, to give three high-quality food content creators the opportunity to travel to Italy for an immersive brand weekend. The aim for the trip was to get the influencers to learn about the award-winning Farchioni olive oil and visit the olive groves to see first-hand how the products are grown, farmed, and produced.
October and November are key harvesting periods for olives, so it was the perfect timing to take guests out to Farchioni’s olive groves in Umbria. Upon arrival the influencers took part in an olive oil tasting to learn how to identify the characteristics of quality extra virgin olive oil. That was followed by a three-course gala dinner using a variety of Farchioni’s olive oils to create authentic Italian dishes, where they were able to meet the family who are still very much involved in the business, seven generations on.
The second day was jam-packed at the olive groves where the influencers were shown how the trees are harvested and even had a chance to pick olives. Lunch followed at the family’s farm-house called Il Casolare (which one of its extra virgin olive oils is named after), nestled on a hill top in the middle of the olive groves. The afternoon consisted of a factory tour to see how the olives are transported from the groves and produced into olive oil, followed by a dinner with Farchoini’s chef at the brand’s winery. The dinner was an intimate and interactive session where the influencers were able to step inside the kitchen and help cook the dinner, understanding which olive oils are best used for baking, frying and dressing salads and meat.
The influencer trip resulted in 60 Instagram posts – a mix of Stories, Reels and grid posts – from the three content creators, reaching over 215,100 followers. All influencers generated aesthetically rich, branded content that took their followers on a Farchioni journey over the weekend, which we were then able to repurpose on Farchioni’s own social channels.
This trip illustrates how important it is to immerse influencers in brands, rather than take a product-only approach. As journalists and influencers get confident in travelling again in this post-covid world, these experiences will become a mainstay of our campaigns once more.
