Cheryl Hunter (shelflife at marklives.com)’s weekly pick of all things new — product, packaging, design, insight, food, décor and more!
- A new identity for Heavy Chef
- UCook enters Gauteng
- TomTom on the move
Getting heavy
The Heavy Chef initiative, founded almost a decade ago by innovation agency, World Wide Creative (WWC), as a platform for practical learning about digital marketing, has rebranded itself as a fully fledged standalone brand, focused upon sharing insights on leadership, technology and creativity.
According to co-founder, Fred Roed, the name was inspired by the expression ‘never trust a skinny chef’ and Heavy Chef has been a platform for people who ‘walk the talk, practice what they preach and eat their own [dog] food’. It has grown 100% organically without advertising, driven by its burgeoning social community. With events as its mainstay, it has seen over 10 000 attendees and featured more than 100 speakers.
Roed says the new identity, designed by WWC’s CREATE team, is indicative of a simple idea — celebrating people that do: “Heavy Chef will continue to glean insights from its monthly events and distil this content into our primary channels: the video portal, social channels, the newsletters and the quarterly magazines. The recent problem, that we needed to solve, was that the Heavy Chef brand was being confused with World Wide Creative’s service offering of digital marketing. Although digital is a great topic, Heavy Chef reaches far beyond marketing. So, we decided to distinguish the two brands from each other.”
WWC remains the mother brand and Heavy Chef is now free to expand into three main focus areas: leadership, technology and creativity.
heavychef.com • Facebook • Twitter
Dinner at the door
Imagine a recipe book that delivered all the ingredients you needed to cook every recipe in it — straight to your door. Enter dinner kit delivery service UCook, which has grown a consumer base in Cape Town and aims to make this fantasy a reality in Gauteng and beyond.
Designed to help clients learn how to cook healthy gourmet meals easily, UCookusers visit the site weekly to select meals from one of three menus (rustic, low-carb or vegetarian) that have been curated by well-known chefs; choose the number of portions; add a paired wine if desired; and wait for the doorbell to ring.
Co-founder, David Torr, says the team has a farm-to-fork philosophy to source organic ingredients such as grass-fed beef and free-range eggs from local purveyors, as well as rural and urban farming projects: “We accurately measure these and deliver them, along with their corresponding recipe cards, directly to your address for you to cook in the comfort of your own home. With our entry into Gauteng, we hope to spread the ethos that cooking good, healthy food can be easy when you don’t have to worry about all the admin associated with the process.”
UCook has grown its customer base by 200% over the past six months, with plans to expand beyond South African borders in the pipeline: “Our mission is to make cooking accessible and fun for all inspired home cooks. We plan to do this by reinvigorating the dinner table dynamic with fresh new recipes and great ingredients that will keep people cooking.”
www.ucook.co.za • Facebook • Twitter
On the road with TomTom
TomTom has launched a global initiative calling on drivers to submit footage of their favourite driving experiences for a film celebrating life on the road, made entirely from footage shot by real drivers.
From the everyday to the extraordinary, TomTom wants drivers to capture and share their driving experiences for the chance to star in the film, called Life in a Car.
Directed by Natalia Andreadis, who worked upon Ridley Scott’s award-winning crowd-sourced movie, Life in a Day, the movie will premiere in South Africa in September this year.
Anyone may submit footage via the TomTom Video Collaboration Community app for smartphones or by uploading their films to a Facebook app. The submission period runs until 15 August 2016.
Says Corinne Vigreux, co-founder and managing director of TomTom consumer, “TomTom has a genuine passion for helping people to move. We are at the heart of millions of car journeys around the world, every day, and we are thrilled to be joining forces with drivers to create something truly unique together.”
The app may be downloaded here (Android) and here (iOS)
www.tomtom.com • Facebook • Twitter
Shelf Life is MarkLives.com’s weekly column covering all things new. Notify us of yours at shelflife at marklives dot com. Want to sponsor Shelf Life? Contact us here.
Cheryl Hunter (@cherylhunter) has written for the South African media, marketing and advertising industries for more than 15 years. A former editor of M&M in Independent Newspapers and contributor to Bizcommunity, AdFocus, AdReview and the Ad Annual, she has also produced for various television networks and currently consults on communication strategy and media liaison.
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