Building a social-first community for OXO, where great cooking meets great content

Client OXO

Project Summary

OXO came to Uprated with a clear challenge: be relevant in the social feeds where cooking culture lives.

We developed an end-to-end strategy across Instagram and TikTok, building the brand’s TikTok from scratch while strengthening its Instagram community, rooted in the food, cooking, and chef world that OXO has always served.

The result was a content ecosystem that works at scale without losing the human feel that makes people stop scrolling: strong follower growth, high engagement, and the kind of reach that builds real brand equity.

Organic Reach

+ 155%

Vs Previous Year

Capturing new demographics and expanding OXO’s presence across cooking and lifestyle audiences

Follower Growth

+ 120%

Within 6 Months

Targeted, community-focused growth aligned with OXO’s core audiences and product verticals

Video Content Views

+ 195%

Vs Previous Year

A video-first approach to content, built for Reels and TikTok, driving sustained engagement and discovery

Who is OXO?

Founded in 1990, OXO transformed the homeware category with its pioneering ergonomic design and a genuinely thoughtful approach to everyday tasks. Today the brand spans cooking, baking, cleaning, and baby, known for pairing innovation with purpose to make the everyday better. OXO’s tools are designed to feel as good as they perform.

The challenge

OXO had spent over thirty years earning the trust of cooking enthusiasts and that trust was not something to gamble with. The brief was to grow: reach new audiences, spotlight a broader product portfolio, and build a social presence that felt genuinely alive in the feeds where food culture now happens. But doing so meant holding two things in tension simultaneously.

The brand needed to be modern and platform-native without abandoning the credibility and craft that had built it. And as competitors sharpened their own social strategies, the pressure to move quickly was real.

The solution

We built a social-first content strategy from the ground up, designed to grow an audience, test what resonated, and create the kind of community that keeps showing up.

Content pillars were anchored in the moments OXO’s audience cared most about: healthy eating, meal prep, and the everyday rhythms of home cooking. We prioritised short-form video across TikTok and Reels: real, human, watchable content with voiceovers, recipe walkthroughs, ASMR-style product moments, and genuine product use that performed in-feed rather than around it.

Creator partnerships brought additional reach and authenticity, layering real-world storytelling alongside Uprated-produced assets. We stayed close to cultural moments, tapping relevant calendar events, food trends, and community conversations to ensure OXO was always showing up at the right time, in the right context.

Across everything, quality was non-negotiable. Whether the content was original, repurposed, or creator-led, it held to a consistent standard that reflected the brand’s credibility and helped turn casual browsers into engaged followers.

The obstacles

The food and homeware space is crowded, and social has made it more so. Brands that once competed only on shelf space now compete for seconds of attention in the same feeds. The challenge wasn’t standing out for the sake of it, it was standing out in a way that reinforced OXO’s authority rather than diluting it.

What made this genuinely complex was the breadth of OXO’s portfolio. With products spanning categories from mandolines to mops, the content strategy had to be coherent without being narrow and flexible enough to serve different product verticals and audience segments while still feeling like one brand. Getting that architecture right, and maintaining it consistently across a high volume of content, was the work behind the work.

A look to the future

For OXO, the next phase is about deepening what’s already working. Greater strategic alignment between content and seasonal or cultural moments will ensure the brand shows up consistently and with intention across the calendar.

Creator and UGC collaborations will expand, with a sharper focus on authentic storytelling and real-life product use, the kind of content that builds trust at scale. And as the data matures, ongoing testing and optimisation across formats, video length, and calls to action will continue to sharpen performance. OXO has the community foundations. The next step is converting that community into committed customers.

“ What our team said…

“An audience segmented strategy executed with the combined expertise from Social, Content and Influencer teams delivered outstanding results across core audience profiles for OXO.”

James Walls – Head of Digital & Strategy