• by Karlene Lukovitz  @KLmarketdaily, August 11, 2016

Quaker is among the first CPG brands to jump on experimenting with Instagram’s new “Stories” feature.

The new platform, launched on Aug. 2, is remarkably similar to Snapchat. It lets users easily create 10-second videos or  montages, which can include original art made with a drawing feature. 

Both formats encourage spontaneity and timeliness, since the videos disappear after 24 hours. And because Instagram Stories appear at the top of users’ existing feeds, brands can frequently update their stories or narratives, such as coverage of an event, without worrying about alienating fans by bombarding their feeds.

Further, Instagram has about 300 million daily users, according to parent Facebook. That’s reportedly about double the size of Snapchat’s user base. 

Quaker’s digital/social agency, VaynerMedia, helped the brand create a video quickly enough to debut it within a few hours after Stories went live, Elena Parlatore, Quaker’s director of digital marketing and social media, tells Marketing Daily.

Reflecting the success of Quaker’s “overnight oats” recipes content on other social channels, including Facebook and Pinterest, the brand’s first Instagram Story (viewable on the agency’s site) used 10 images to show the simple steps to creating “peanut butter banana overnight oats.”

“This was one of the biggest platform updates on social media in months, so we saw it as a great opportunity to highlight Quaker as a first mover in the space, while driving brand awareness and educating our growing Instagram community on how to make overnight oats,” notes Parlatore.

Quaker found that, as with Snapchat, viewership of the Instagram Story was highest at the start, declining steadily after each step. 

The video pulled 2,527 total views within the first 12 hours, which Parlatore deems promising. “That was without the paid promotion that we normally need to do now with social videos,” she says. 

Looking forward, she adds, “We have tons of overnight oats recipes on our site already, and they readily lend themselves to this new Stories format, so we feel like the sky’s the limit as far as experimenting with it.”

Quaker is considering distributing an Instagram Story each week -- possibly on Sunday evenings, because fans tend to make the overnight oats recipes on Sundays to eat during the upcoming weekdays, Parlatore explains.

The brand is also planning to explore new recipes with consumers. “We want to get them excited by inspiring them to come up with new recipes using ingredients that are already in their pantries,” she says.

The Quaker brand’s main Instagram page is currently showing 4,600 followers. Two user-generated (not Quaker’s) Instagram pages, #quakeroats and #overnightoats, are showing nearly 26,000 and nearly 277,000 posts, respectively.

PepsiCo sibling brand Mountain Dew was also among the first CPG brands to try Instagram Stories.