In this interview, Polly Barnfield, OBE, talks with Louise, the manager of Ludlow Gin’s Instagram reels, about the brand’s reel strategy. Louise explains that Ludlow Gin creates three main types of reels: simple image‑based reels that showcase partner products like Asterly Brothers vermouth, on‑the‑day event reels capturing the team (Finn, Sean) making cocktails for the public, and higher‑production cocktail reels produced with external creator Dominic. She notes that reels now dominate Ludlow Gin’s social plan, with a large bank of cocktail reels being curated for future use. The shift from in‑feed video to reels is driven by significantly higher engagement and reach, as reels appear in multiple discovery pathways (Explore tab, dedicated Reels tab, and the main feed) and are favoured by Instagram’s algorithm. While in‑feed video allows longer formats and linking, it suffers from lower distribution. The conversation highlights the strategic trade‑offs, the importance of algorithmic prioritisation, and the collaborative workflow behind reel production.
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Louise, Hi. You can talk me through how Ludlow Gin do reels. I know that you manage their reels for them, so it'd be really great to understand the, you know, how you approach creating their reels, what you want to achieve from them, and talk through some of the really successful reels they've had.
Okay. Yeah. So we have used reels in different ways. If I just go to the reels section here, we've used reels just to promote some of the different. So this is Asterly Brothers. We use their vermouth, we sell their vermouth, and the vermouth is used in their cocktails. So this is kind of a reel that, as you can see, is really simple, just put together with a series of images from Asterly Brothers in order for us to share their content. Hopefully, that gives you the very kind of simplest element of what we, you know, what we've been able to do with them. We've also got reels that we've used which are very, very simple, which is just live when we were at events. And again, these are reels that we've created on the day where Finn and the team and Sean and the team are kind of making cocktails for public in order to showcase, I think probably the most interesting type of reel, and obviously, unfortunately, you can't actually kind of hear the music, are the much more professional reels that are pulled. In order to do this, we bring in a content creator called Dominic, who has worked with us. So we come up with the cocktails and then we pull together with him the various bits of kind of collateral. And again, it's just created in exactly the same way, short sections of video clip as he makes the cocktails. So. So that we can kind of sell the dream, really, for Ludlow Gin. So this is a really good example of a reel that we've created as a result of working alongside Dominic. So very different types of reels all having kind of different impacts and getting kind of great, you know, great content. Now, reels for us, for Ludlow Gin, are a really big part of the strategy moving forward. We're actually in the process at the moment of kind of curating a huge bank of reels to be able to use moving forward, all connected to cocktails that we are, that have been created. So we've used in feed video an awful lot to this point, but reels are where we're moving and changing up all of the content. Would it be helpful here to talk about the in feed videos?
Yeah, no, that's interesting. Louise, why are you switching from infeed to reels and then as a separate sound bite so that people can choose to watch more or watch another one if they want.
Reels get more engagement. That as simple as that. The. The reach is so much more effective. And actually if you have a look at the very bottom of the. The Instagram screen here I'm going to click on, it is. This is the reels button where it's just. You can scroll through and look at all of the reels. There are so many ways in which you can be discovered when you are producing reels. So actually you can appear much higher up in the Explore tab. There's a dedicated reels tab at the bottom of every Instagram feed for people to consume just reels content. So you've got now three or four extra additional ways for your content to be seen if you're using reels. And it's absolutely where Instagram are prioritizing the algorithm. So if you're not actually producing reels on a regular bas, you really are a huge disadvantage on Instagram. So prior to reels kind of really gaining prominence, we were using a lot of video content, which you can see how much video content we'd kind of put out. All kind of getting really good likes, engagement follows. But actually nothing is as good as reels.
You heard it here, people. Nothing is as good as a reel. Louise, I'm stopping there and we are going to go and look at in feed video for anybody who wants to know more about it. Because the benefit of it is it does give you longer format, but it has lots of disadvantages in that you can't link out to other sites and Instagram don't show it to as many people. Is that fair?
I think that's fair. Yep.
Perfect. So reels is the way forward, people. You've got any questions? Hit the blue button, bottom right hand corner and you'll hear more from the.
