PlayPlay helps Ynsect demystify insect-based nutrition

Making insect-based nutrition a palatable alternative

Founded in France in 2011 by scientists and environmental activists, Ynsect is revolutionizing the food industry with insect-based protein solutions for pets, fish, plants, and human consumption.

With 300 employees, $500 million from leading global investors, and a recently opened farm in the US, Ynsect is growing fast. The B2B company is part of the prestigious French Tech Next40 and is now exporting products worldwide.

Is Ynsect’s pioneering technology and business model the answer to the major challenges of our time? Can insect food really feed the world’s population, preserve biodiversity, and fight global warming?

Nicole Vince, Communications Manager at Ynsect, is convinced it can. The problem is that the industry is relatively new: “in the West, we just aren’t used to consuming insect ingredients.” Her goal is to demystify insect-based nutrition and educate markets about Ynsect’s sustainable.

From static to video: telling better, more engaging stories

A lot of people don’t really read a caption, and they definitely don’t click on an article link.

Although Ynsect is an industry leader, insect-based nutrition is still largely unknown. What exactly is an insect-vertical farm? And what’s it like to work at one?

Education is a key pillar for Ynsect’s communication and recruitment efforts. Nicole needs to shed light on the company’s mission, promote its food products as a viable alternative, and make its day-to-day activity more tangible.

Before using video, Ynsect was mainly communicating about these issues with static visuals on social media, or by sharing links to articles. But it was “hard to communicate with just one static visual” to get their message across, restricted by word count and barely-read captions. On top of that, scrollers would rarely click on article links.

Nicole wanted to diversify Ynsect’s content mix to tell more engaging stories, more often. She decided to look for a solution that would enable her to create a lot of videos, fast — and with complete autonomy.

Enter PlayPlay.

PlayPlay: a natural choice

Nicole benchmarked around 5 video creation platforms to find the ideal solution for Ynsect. Her priority was to find one that “would do the majority of the work” and offer ready-made templates for different video formats.

Most platforms were highly flexible, with plenty of editing tools and technical features. However, they were complex and time-consuming to use, requiring video skills she didn’t have. Others, like Storyfox, were rich in templates but designed uniquely for a specific type of video format, like interviews.

PlayPlay was the only solution that offered everything Nicole was looking for:

• Video templates for every format: In addition to interview videos, Ynsect uses customizable templates to create tutorials, company news, podcasts teasers, and more.
• Built-in transitions: For a comms pro without video editing skills, “choosing the right transition between screens can be very difficult. With PlayPlay it’s done automatically and it looks really professional.”
• Powerful branding options: Ynsect’s brand assets — colors, fonts, and logos — are automatically integrated into every video, boosting recognition and consistency across all content.
• High-quality stock media: With access to Getty Images — the world’s best stock media library — and a catalog of themed music tracks, Ynsect can illustrate any message and bring it to life.

It’s impressive: in less than an hour you can create a professional-looking video, with no technical skills.

Given these strengths, after going through the free trial the decision was a no brainer!

Boosting engagement with consistent video content

Video allows you to get across the main messages in a much more engaging way than other formats. For big announcements, like the opening of our farm in the US, it was great to be able to use video. It’s difficult to have the same impact with static.

Equipped with PlayPlay, Nicole’s communications team is now producing 2 videos per week to share on social media platforms like LinkedIn, Instagram and Youtube.  Some stand-out video projects include:

• The ‘Ynsecter’ video series. These employee interviews help to demystify Ynsect’s mission, processes, and products, all while humanizing the brand and highlighting employee achievements.
• Recruitment campaigns. To reach its ambitious growth targets, Ynsect promotes open positions on social media. These catchy videos highlight the job’s key missions, requirements, and benefits, featuring photos and clips of positive employee experiences.

Nicole also creates videos on an ad-hoc basis. She produced a high-performing announcement video for the opening of Ysnect’s new farm in the US, and a ‘2021 recap’ to highlight the achievements of a successful year.

Having seen the power of video, Ynsect started sharing news and employee interviews on its internal communication platform Steeple, to keep employees informed and to celebrate achievements.

For example, they recently created an anniversary video for their ‘trade school program’ — an intensive onboarding for new recruits to cover the basics of insect-based agriculture. They shared it internally with 300 users, got 113 unique views, and more than 30 likes — 3x the engagement of an average post!

Ynsect has made significant progress toward educating the market about its industry. But there’s still work to do. Nicole and Ynsect’s communications team plan to scale video production for their awareness efforts, while developing video strategies for additional channels like Youtube.

With PlayPlay by its side, Ynsect hopes to demystify insect-nutrition solutions and uncover a path to a sustainable future.