Black Steel Pans: A Case Study.
At Matfer Bourgeat USA, we took a cult-favorite product and expanded its market reach without sacrificing our “BOH” DNA. Here’s how.
Creative Direction | Copywriting | Campaign Strategy
Live fire. Seasoned stovetops. Plenty of butter.
Matfer Bourgeat’s Black Carbon Steel Pans had been a professional kitchen staple for decades before a spate of earned media unexpectedly launched the product into the home cookware space in the USA. The product line needed new creative direction to respond to this new consumer market without watering down its cult status.
The D2C cookware market in 2020 was crowded with startup brands selling slight variations on that same millenial aspirational domesticity: clean white marble kitchens, spotless product, and that full flash plasticity food styled to within an inch of its life. An aesthetic that future generations will surely look back on with the same bemusement as we do about grandma’s jello salads.
Matfer's Black Carbon Steel Pan lives on a hot line. It develops a patina. The product requires culinary technique, regular diligent care, and builds character and performance over time in tandem with its user. Ignoring that reality in favor of broad appeal would risk brand credibility and product satisfaction.
The campaign’s central creative decision was to lean into the product’s specificity, rather than treat it as a constraint. This was the only honest choice. Even if that meant a little grease on the range.
Visual Identity
Shoots were always set in working kitchen environments with working chefs. No studios, no stylists. Live fire, seasoned stovetops, and plenty of butter. Smoke, sizzle, and even a little splatter situate the product in its (naturally dramatic) natural environment while accurately describing its functionality as a high-heat, high-use kitchen workhorse.
Educational Copy
Carbon steel cooking, seasoning and care can seem daunting to home chefs familiar with nonstick or stainless steel products. Educational materials, from product packaging pamphlets to long form video, offered clear instructions and information while speaking the technical language of chefs in line with our BOH DNA. We got people the information while keeping them excited about their results.
Social
The product’s organic social presence was designed to be agile to industry trends and interested in culinary technique. The stuff chefs scroll on a pre-shift smoke break. UGC from working restaurant professionals was favored over influencer marketing or paid brand ambassadors relationships. Expanding our audience never meant chasing every eyeball. We stayed non-pandering to our core audience of professionals and brought aspirational insight to our growing audience of high information home chefs.
Paid social assets double down on the product’s in-kitchen visual specificity and leverage earned media accolades, like our best-in-class awards from America’s Test Kitchen.
Order up.
In a multi-year project that weathered COVID and dramatic global supply chain dynamics, the black carbon steel product family grew sales 28% overall. The pan is now Matfer's single best-performing SKU, selling over 50,000 units annually on Amazon US alone. That’s more than all other domestic and international sales channels combined.