Borges India

Cook For Your Loved Ones — a Spanish heritage brand told in the language of Indian home kitchens.

Don't sell the oil. Sell the person the cook is cooking for.

01 The Snapshot

Borges — a heritage Spanish olive-oil and pantry brand — partnered with 98 Entertainment to build an emotionally-led creator campaign for its India social footprint. Each creator dedicates a recipe cooked with Borges products to someone they love, and invites their audience to do the same under #CookForYourLovedOnes.

98 ran the programme end-to-end: strategy, creator sourcing and negotiation, recipe development, product-ship logistics, draft approvals, brand-safe editing, posting schedule, paid amplification.

02 The Challenge

Borges is a century-old European pantry staple — globally credible, but in India it competes in a category where the emotional equity sits with regional oils (mustard, groundnut, ghee) and incumbents with deep home-kitchen nostalgia. An imported olive-oil and almond-milk house cannot out-spend that nostalgia; it has to earn a seat at the same table.

03 The Strategic Move

We reframed each reel around a dedication mechanic: the creator names a loved one at the top of the film, the recipe becomes a letter to that person, and Borges products are the instrument — not the subject. The brand gets the full 30-second stage, but the emotional grammar is the creator's own.

04 Hero Film · Karan Tripathi

@karanfoodfanatic · Delhi · Food Creator · 63K followers

"Dedicating the dish to my dadi. She would make it when I'd visit my hometown during summer vacations. Though she isn't around anymore, I'd want to dedicate it to her — my twist would be to make it healthier using Borges products." — creator brief, in his own words

The editorial turn — a grandmother's kulfi remade vegan and lactose-free with Borges' almond drink — lets a nut-based pantry product earn a seat inside a classically Indian dessert memory. The product isn't a substitute; it's the vehicle that lets the memory keep living.

05 Hero Film · Himanshi Mittal

@aromatic_flavourss · Delhi · Home Cook · 231K followers (12K at launch)

A weeknight-cook's ode to the family member who always eats her experiments first — a quick, plated open toast that feels like a recipe passed across a kitchen counter, not a demo. The role of this film in the line-up is accessibility: a recipe a viewer can attempt the next morning, with Borges' extra-virgin olive oil drizzled in exactly when the reel asks them to. Low-barrier participation is how the hashtag spreads.

06 Hero Film · Renee Chopra

@reneechopra · Delhi · Cook & Recipe Developer · 53.5K followers

A classic Italian comfort plate, built around tomatoes and Borges pasta — a deliberate, uncomplicated film that lets the catalogue speak cleanly. Brought in on a prior 98 collaboration, Renee's slot was the product-forward anchor — the reel the brand would paid-boost to extend reach beyond organic. Cleared usage rights and cover/end-slide compliance let the brand deploy the asset across its own targeting pools.

07 How It Was Run

The work behind each reel is what separates a creator activation that fires from one that spirals. 98 held the client on one side and the creator roster, their managers and logistics on the other.

Creative strategy. Brief interpretation, dedication mechanic, hashtag architecture, CTA framing. Turned a generic "cooking reel" ask into a campaign with a participation layer.

Creator sourcing. Shortlisting, profile vetting, home-chef filter, regional coverage, commercial benchmarking. Filtered out review-bloggers; locked in creators whose audiences reward earnest cooking content.

Commercials & contracts. Creator-by-creator negotiation, partial-barter structures, usage-rights add-ons, MoUs. Brought creator-package economics inside the brand's envelope without compromising on roster quality.

Recipe & product logistics. Recipe approval loops, SKU selection, doorstep shipment, reshipments where product arrived dented. A dented almond-milk pack would have been visible in the final shot. 98 spotted it, flagged the brand and pushed a re-ship before shoot day.

Creative approvals. First drafts, brand review cycles, revision management, lock. Multiple iteration rounds were absorbed by 98, not passed to the brand.

Brand-safe editing. Cover-template compliance, end-slide insertion, scrubbing of competing brands, hashtag placement. Every reel ships visually "on brand" — assets the brand can run across its own channels and ads.

Paid amplification. Usage-rights clauses, Meta boost planning, collab-reel vs. standard-reel decisions. Paid media was applied surgically rather than sprayed, conserving budget and keeping organic reels organic.

08 What the Work Delivered

Read on three axes: creative quality, reach & engagement, and what the assets keep doing after the window closes.

Creative quality. Three films, three distinct emotional devices — tribute, sibling intimacy, weeknight comfort. Reads as a collection, not a series of reshoots. Products embedded inside recipes a viewer could plausibly cook — not unboxing frames. Brand-compliance landed without visible handprints: cover, end-slide and hashtag chain live inside each reel without compromising creator voice.

Reach & engagement. Combined creator reach in the 50K–230K band, deliberately skewed toward high-intent food audiences. Recipe-first reels on these accounts over-index on saves and comments — viewers treat the reel as a bookmarked recipe. One hero reel carried full paid amplification, extending reach beyond organic into the brand's own targeting pools.

UGC & audience participation. The dedication mechanic worked beyond the hero films. Viewers wrote in with their own happy-moment recipes; the brand ran a contest layer on the same hashtag and announced 10 user-submitted winners at the close of the window. The brand's grid carried multi-week of contestant reposts in a "Cook for your loved ones — [Name]'s happy moments" frame.

Asset longevity. Three creator reels with cleared usage rights still in rotation. The campaign creative format (cover + end-slide) was reused on subsequent UGC reposts. A ready-to-run regional creator roster, scoped during the campaign, became a starting point for any phase-two activation. A hashtag that can anchor UGC prompts, store campaigns or seasonal (Rakhi, Diwali, Mother's Day) activations.

09 What This Proves

A specific capability stack — one that transfers cleanly to any pantry, FMCG or D2C brand building cultural traction in Indian kitchens.

Emotional-first creative frame. An olive-oil brand isn't a spec sheet; a cooking-oil brand isn't either. We lead with the person on the other side of the plate and let the product stand where it's needed.

Home-chef network, not food bloggers. Recipe-first creators whose followers screenshot recipes and cook from them. That audience converts cleaner for a consumable pantry SKU than a review-led influencer pool.

Full-stack campaign operations. Creator sourcing, negotiation, MoUs, product logistics, approvals, brand-safe edits, paid-media handover — one desk, not six vendors.

Rights-cleared assets with a second life. Every reel we ship is built to be boosted, clipped, and re-aired across the brand's own properties — the CPM isn't burnt on a single organic window.

The verified roster

@karanfoodfanatic@aromatic_flavourss@reneechopra