How Creative Food Placement Sells More Than Just Food
Brands are becoming increasingly creative in their tactics to engage and captivate audiences. One trend that has gained significant traction is the use of food placement—pairing non-food products with food imagery to create enticing, relatable visuals. By leveraging the universal appeal of food, brands are crafting campaigns that not only grab attention but also establish emotional connections with consumers. Let’s dive into the psychology behind it.
Why Food?
People are drawn to images that evoke comfort, familiarity, and enjoyment, and few things do that as universally as food. Non-food brands are increasingly integrating food into their campaigns as a way to resonate with audiences on an emotional level. By pairing products with food, brands communicate ideas of luxury, self-care, and fun — often without needing a single word.
Food’s sensory appeal—its ability to evoke memories, comfort, and a sense of community—makes it an effective storytelling tool. The choice of foods and how you present them can create specific “vibes” that align your product and brand with the emotions or lifestyle you want to convey to your audience.
The Psychology & Marketing Behind It
To understand the impact of food marketing, it's essential to look at how it taps into psychological triggers that dictate what captures consumers’ attention and why. Here are some of them…
It creates familiarity. Placing a product alongside something as universal as food creates a sense of familiarity. Viewers feel more connected to the product as if it’s already part of their daily lives.
It also tells the story you want to tell. By pairing products with food, brands can create a narrative surrounding the product. This approach helps consumers visualise themselves using the product in a setting they can relate to or aspire to.
It stimulates your senses. High-quality visuals of food, like coffee, fresh fruits, chocolate and more, engage multiple senses, captivating consumers’ attention even more. This also has the potential to enhance the product’s overall appeal.
It creates an aesthetic contrast. A lot of the time, the juxtaposition of luxury items with everyday foods adds an element of surprise and makes the campaign or piece of content far more memorable. People still relate heirloom tomatoes to Loewe — because it communicates a general appeal and vibe.
It’s shareable. Because of its natural juxtaposition, surprising products and food pairings create shareable content.
How Big Brands Are Using Food Placement
Several popular brands have leaned into food placement to boost the appeal of non-food products. Here are some of our favourite case studies.
Lemme
One of Lemme’s first campaigns included cake, which a) provides contrast for a wellness brand and b) allows consumers to link the supplements to being “a treat”!
Rhode
Rhode’s campaign for Glazing Milk toner, with Hailey Bieber pouring "milk" over her, evokes a sense of nourishment, relief, and soothing comfort—perfectly aligning with the products focus for sensitive skin.
REFY
REFY’s summer collection features vibrant fruits, like citrus, to align with the colourful nature of summer. This strategic use of fruit aligns with the brand’s aim to position their summer collection as the makeup essentials for the season, emphasizing their bright, lively hues and promoting a natural, sun-kissed aesthetic.
BREAD
While not part of a specific product launch, BREAD, leveraged the unexpected combination of food and their products to capture attention. The almost-excessive use of food aimed to create intrigue, generate buzz, and challenge conventional marketing norms, encouraged consumers to engage with the brand through its bold and unconventional approach.
The Future of Food Marketing
As food marketing continues to evolve and branch out into its own little niche, its effectiveness and the “boom” it has made in the marketing world is undeniable. This form of marketing is the ultimate storyteller — by crafting narratives that resonate with audiences in different ways. Its juxtapositioning transcends traditional marketing and definitely creates engaging and shareable content. After all, with social media’s oversaturated algorithms, brands are constantly finding new ways to the unique and gain attention, and food marketing is one way to do it. As consumers continue to evolve, as all humans do, we can expect to see even more innovative uses of food placement in future marketing campaigns — or something completely new! But the current use of creative food placement proves that sometimes the best way to sell non-food products is through storytelling, and using something that we can all love and relate to — being food!
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