BBC FOOD: HUMOUR | SURPRISE | BEAUTIFUL FOOD

We’re looking to commission 40 minutes of short-form videos for BBC Food to demonstrate key cooking techniques and recipes that will help young, novice cooks to feel confident in the kitchen.

About BBC Food

BBC Food, part of BBC Learning, is a market-leading recipe website for the BBC’s cookery output as well as a website that helps audiences learn to cook better and more often. Our website is full of dependable recipes with beautiful, inspiring pictures, health and dietary advice to help our audience navigate food choices, and video techniques to guide them through learning new skills.

Video content on BBC Food is a priority for the future, and the site is revamping its techniques area to be broader, fresher and more appealing to a younger audience. Our goal is to teach people to cook in a way that doesn’t feel intimidating, time-consuming, boring or expensive. We don’t want Masterchef-style techniques, but basics that make quick and easy food taste amazing. Less preparing a lobster, more boiling an egg.

In addition to the Techniques hub, 30-second techniques are also served on recipe pages as videos that are available when you’re in the middle of a recipe and you don’t quite know how to do something.

Our audience

BBC Food is designed for busy people keen to find solutions to the daily conundrum of what to eat for dinner that fits challenging parameters – chiefly diet, skills, budget and time. We want to reach younger, novice cooks who seek information in a visual format.

Our audience is super-served with food content from traditional and digital media – especially unhealthy and processed convenience foods marketed by companies. Their expectations of what they could eat are high, raised by the promise of convenience foods, but they lack confidence to cook something with more than a few ingredients. They are likely to be heavy mobile users, both on the move and in the kitchen. Our principal target demographic group is women aged 20-34 – both independent and with young families.

They care about the quality of their diet, but flip between wanting to eat healthy and wanting luxurious feel-good treats. Our stance is to encourage any and all home cooking, but especially to extend audiences’ knowledge of how to prepare fresh, whole foods and specifically fruit and vegetables. To achieve this, the food in all our visual imagery needs to look delicious, vibrant and worth the effort.

We understand that cooking fresh and healthy food takes time, but confidence in the kitchen and quick advice at the point when it’s needed can maximise the value of our audiences’ time and attention. Quality isn’t just about how content is made, but about what it can do for them – that it makes life easier.

Formats

We want content that’s shareable and promotable – the balance of useful and entertaining is what we want to explore. We want a selection box of video that could sit happily as a story on the BBC Homepage (bbc.co.uk), the BBC News website, the BBC’s social media channels as well as utilitarian short clips that help our audience find just the bit they need to make their recipe.

BBC Food has diverse legacy content, so would be interested in a content package that has different narrative styles, while maintaining a consistent overall tone and look.

Some examples of BBC Food videos

Cheat’s samosas with Nadiya Hussain – presenter-led video https://www.bbc.com/food/techniques/how_to_make_cheats_samosas

Making perfect pasta with Anna del Conte – presenter-led video https://www.bbc.com/food/techniques/how_to_cook_the_perfect_pasta

Softening butter fast with Mary Berry – presenter-led video https://www.bbc.com/food/techniques/how_to_soften_butter_fast

Perfect pancakes without a recipe – no presenter https://www.bbc.com/food/techniques/perfect_pancakes

Whisking egg whites – no presenter https://www.bbc.com/food/techniques/whisking_egg_whites

We are looking to commission a diverse range of video formats, with and without presenters

15 minutes – series of approximately 1 minute technique films without a presenter

25 minutes – series of approximately 3 minute films with presenters who appeal to a younger demographic Our content should be promotable to be able to reach ‘Stumblers’, young audiences that bump into its content chiefly via social media and convert them into ‘Seekers’ of our content.

The proposal must include some topical themes, such as Christmas or other occasions.

Some of the core commissioning needs for our short-form video include:

 Live action  High-end production values with special attention to quality and attractiveness of the food  Full of energy and attention-grabbing from first 3 seconds, but simple and engaging topics  Optimised for mobile (include a square version with subtitles for social media)  Copyright-cleared for use on BBC online platforms and social media. BBC Food is hosted on a BBC website and is aimed primarily at UK audiences but is not geoblocked.  We would expect any ideas of talent-led videos to have in-principle agreement from the presenter

What we are looking for

 Videos where the audience actually learns something, potentially solving a long-held problem  We are keen on ideas that offer genuine short-cuts or bust myths – no nonsense or useless gimmicky hacks!  Content that is promotable around topical hooks (special occasions, seasons, etc)  We want to bring a diverse range of voices, ideas and foods to the audience.  We are interested in things that are unexpected and surprising.  We want BBC Food to be like a friend in the kitchen, not an instructor

Home Economist

You will need to work with and contract a home economist who will be involved throughout the process to ensure all recipe and technique information is accurate and relevant. Your consultant should provide advice on which technique is the most useful for the audience, but retains simplicity. He or she should also be checking accuracy of information and consistency/continuity during filming.

Our tone

 Personal and humorous rather than detached and emotionless  Encouraging and accepting of things going wrong  Informal and conversational, natural  A peer, not an authority  Fun and playful, not earnest

A few other creative references

Epicurious: This treatment captures the tone and the blend of utility and entertainment, with a segmentable nugget of useful info at the centre of an entertaining watch https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KdD2Vm3pzeo

Tightly focused with a fun tone: https://youtu.be/lTW7YHevzD4

How to pitch

The pitching process is open to all independent production companies who can demonstrate experience creating thoughtful and high-quality food films.

Commissioning schedule 2018

July 4: publication of pitch

July 31: deadline for submissions

July 31-Aug 10: ideas considered and pitching meetings held with suppliers

Aug 15: deadline for communicating decisions to supplier

Please ensure your production schedule meets this deadline. Please note that this document is for information purposes only and does not form part of a contractual agreement with the BBC. If you have any additional questions, you can email [email protected], the BBC Food Editor.

Budget

Budget is dependent on the idea and editorial ambition. As a guide please consider a range of approximately £400-£1000 per minute.

Your budgeting should not assume the BBC will deliver archive at no cost. [Independent Producers have access to the BBC archives subject to the usual copyright restrictions of reuse etc.] Please refer to the Independent Production User Guide and the FAQ for Independent companies for more information. http://downloads.bbc.co.uk/informationandarchives/PACT_june_2016.pdf

Please include a budget breakdown to show how you intend to cost the project. Contract fees will follow the below payment schedule:  5% on signature of the agreement  15% on topic/script sign-off  20% FDOP  20% sign-off on all rough cuts  20% sign-off fine cuts  20% on BBC acceptance of full delivery Contracting

This is a stand-alone new media commission and the BBC will require all rights in the content, in perpetuity, worldwide and on all platforms.

This commission will be contracted under the BBC’s New Media Framework 2. Further information on the BBC’s New Media Frameworks can be seen on our Commissioning pages here: http://www.bbc.co.uk/commissioning/online/articles/how-we-work#framework

Proposals

Proposals should be provided as either MS Word documents or PDFs. They should be a maximum of 15 pages long. Any large files (over 5MB) should be delivered separately from the proposal itself (via a password-protected video site or secure file transfer).

Proposals should include

 Clear editorial vision: an overall vision and structure for the films  Schedule and budget breakdown; One for the technique films and one for the presenter-led films  Evidence of your capacity to deliver the suite of films  Suggested talent for presenting

All proposals should be submitted via email to [email protected] and [email protected] by midnight on July 31.