Making of a Chile Social Media Campaign
- Joel Gonzalez Parra
- 4 days ago
- 4 min read
In conjunction with the New Mexico Chile Association, team members at Innovative Media Research and Extension wanted to promote green chile, explain the role of New Mexico State University in the development of New Mexico green chile, share recipes, and celebrate chile. The team put together a mixture of how-to videos, historical videos, funny memes, and supporting materials for a social media campaign. This is an example of an educational campaign that also has a marketing component. The primary goal was to build and support the community around New Mexico chile.
With these concepts in mind, let’s take a look at the different steps of the process:
Brainstorming
As the saying goes, two heads are better than one! For the initial step of a marketing process, the team will gather together, familiarize with the client/campaign goals, and discuss meaningful ways to engage with the audience. It was in this part of the process that the team decided to focus on the production of three products: animation videos of New Mexican figures that shaped the chile industry, short social media videos, and a collection of chile hacks and facts for social media posts.
Production and Definition
When deciding the type of content that will be produced, thinking about the audience is crucial. While chile is an important element of New Mexican culture, the team was aware of the importance of creating a campaign that could also engage those who are not as familiar with such cultural and gastronomic aspects of chile. Thus, different series of social media posts were designed to appeal to different groups and their different knowledge about chile:
Short videos and reels: This series is meant to produce in-depth educational and promotional videos that highlight relevant aspects of chile consumption in New Mexico. For this, the team follows the landscape and portrait video formats for a better user experience.
Chile memes: Social media trends played a key role in this campaign to bring a sense of relatability and humor to the promotion of chile. It was important to find trends with a lasting appeal, and that would remain relevant from the brainstorming stage through to posting. The content was intended to be tailored for Gen Z and Millenial audience, keeping in mind platforms like TikTok, Instagram, and Facebook.
Chile 101: A series of short, condensed facts about chile, to spark curiosity within people unfamiliar with it. These posts refer mostly to curious nutritional facts that could be attractive to people who do not incorporate chile in their diets often.
Vintage recipes: Recipes usually are an attractive form of content for people looking to experience something new. At the end of the day, we all have to eat! New Mexico does not lack for traditional foods, which may vary in their ingredients and preparations around the state, so the team decided to add a vintage touch to the recipes for this campaign. The team included recipes from the Green Chile Recipe Fiesta of 1973, a NMSU-sponsored contest that invited people in the community to share their own green chile treats.
Processing chile: Considering that our New Mexico Extension platforms strive to provide audiences research-based knowledge, the team included posts with specific guidance about safe processing of chile. These posts can be used to introduce preservation and consumption techniques to new consumers as well as to provide meaningful tips or reminders to those who are already familiar with canning, roasting, and other elements of chile processing.
New Mexico Cultivars: New Mexico has been a pioneer in the development of many chile varieties. In this series, the team provides technical information and fun facts on some of the successful chile varieties that have been produced within the state. Such a mix of information allows the campaign to speak of the role of the state in the greater chile industry and its implications for New Mexican food culture.
New Mexico Heroes: Following up on the theme of New Mexico cultivars but with a focus on the individuals whose work allowed the chile industry to move forward, we decided to highlight figures from New Mexico’s past. Four chile pioneers were highlighted: Fabiola Cabeza de Baca (Extension Agent and cultural guardian), Fabian Garcia (Father of America’s chile industry), Roy Nakayama (prominent chile breeder), and Priscilla Oliver Grijalva (influential nutrition instructor). The New Mexico Heroes posts also served as a complement to another ongoing project in our department, funded by USDA-NIFA, which highlights historical agricultural innovators via animations and interactive virtual labs inspired by the work of Garcia, Cabeza de Baca, and Nakayama.
Trends and Memes. Social media trends played a key role in this campaign to bring a sense of relatability and humor to the promotion of chile. It was important to find trends with a lasting appeal, and that would remain relevant from the brainstorming stage through to posting. The content was intended to be tailored for Gen Z and Millenial audiences, keeping in mind platforms like TikTok, Instagram, and Facebook. Here are some examples of the types of content we produced in this category:
Propaganda I will not fall for (trend where people identify and reject what they perceive as manipulation or misleading information)
Hinge Prompts (trend where users showcase what excites them shared activities in humorous manner about relationship goals)
Almost Forgot This was the Whole Point (users provide videos of cherished or easily forgotten moments overlaid with text)
Man of The Year (using the song Man of the Year by Lorde, users share screenshots of text message exchanges between them and a significant other depicting a disappointing response).
Thoughts After the Review Process
Chile posts will be released weekly during the upcoming chile season in the NM Cooperative Extension social media platforms. As described in the previous section of the blog, the campaign will cross a diverse range of themes around the industry: In addition to these series, the team has also developed a series of short informational videos and memes in order to incorporate the promotional and educational goals of the campaign. Social media products are intended to be relaxed and casual in their tone to better reach out our audience, while some of them still maintain a more technical character to highlight the characteristics of the crops as well as their history and cultural relevance.
Written by Joel Gonzalez Parra, Multimedia Specialist, Innovative Media Research and Extension at New Mexico State University.
