Food Styling in Advertising
Food Styling creates a visual appeal for the consumers in advertising
Food is a sensuous product and needs to appeal to all five of the senses in order to make it extra desirable. Food styling and food photography provide a visual presentation and are therefore equally as important as taste and smell when it comes to good quality food. With a variety of textures, flavors, fragrances, and colors, any product can be more appealing to a consumer. Gourmet Ads compiled a list of the food blogs that they recommend for inspiration. A reputable food advertising agency realizes this and styles the food accordingly. Marketing vs Advertising further elaborates that how marketing and advertising are different from each other and clear our concept of advertising.
Food stylists can help create stunning food pictures by arranging them in a visually appealing way for a target audience. These expert food arrangers are professionally trained in order to be able to place the food in such a way that it gives the audience an idea about how the food would feel, smell and taste – even if they are looking at a 2D image of the dish!
Customers aren’t stupid – they know that the images of food that they see on billboards, on menus, in magazines or on online ads aren’t as they appear in store. However, many customers still want to know whether they are being cheated out of a super-appetizing meal.
A curious McDonalds customer asked Hope Bagozzi, Director of Marketing for McDonalds, Canada: “Why does your food look different in the advertising than what is in the store?”. The reason behind this was of course that the food took a lot of long preparation to get it looking as colorful and perfect as possible using a food stylist, photographer and image editor.
The reason for this was not to deceive the customer, but was instead to help them get a visual idea of the ingredients going into each burger – i.e. most ingredients were placed to the forefront of the image so that the photo could pick up all ingredients.
Food styling makes Food Photography for Advertising Campaigns Taste Great
It is clear that it is not just food arrangement and photography that is needed to make food adverts look great, it is also a few editorial changes that need to be done to make the food look mouth watering to a potential customer.
There are several advertising techniques that a food advertising agency uses to make the food look tastier and juicer. Styling techniques such as spraying food with oils or steam are different food advertising tricks that are used during the photo shoot to make it look fresh, or using a tool to melt the cheese on a burger (as seen in “Behind The Scenes at a McDonalds Photo Shoot”) are all part of the plan to make customers not just see the food but make them desperately want it.
By releasing a YouTube video like the above not only addresses a customer’s questions but also makes customers warm to the brand due to their honesty about food presentation. Make it clear you are not lying to your customers by using this type of presentation of food – food styling simply makes it much more pretty to look at!
