Barilla’s Listening Room immediately started monitoring the conversations around the French Carbonara; the Brand realized this would be the perfect chance to turn this culinary scandal into an opportunity to show its leadership. How? By replying to Demotivateur and its video in a very quick and creative way: with another video recipe showing how to cook the traditional Carbonara.

Starting from the wrong Ingredients featured in the French recipe shared by Demotivateur, Barilla decided to clarify which were the proper ones to make the real Carbonara, according to the traditional recipe. Bacon? No, Guanciale! Parmigiano? No, Pecorino Romano! No crème fraiche nor raw egg on top. The real Carbonara video recipe has been published on Barilla Italia’s Facebook Page in partnership with L’Huffington Post.

In Italy Carbonara Gate generated:

- mentions: 16 K messages

- topic-related conversations mentioning Barilla: 1.6 K messages

Video views in few days: 1.8 M

Barilla’s Facebook post 1 M views

Huffington Post (Italy)’s Facebook post: 802 K views

Il Mattino’s video on Youtube: 1.6 K views

On February 2017: more than 2.5 M views just on Facebook (Barilla’s Facebook post + Huffington Post (Italy)’s Facebook post

Potentially reached people who talked about Carbonara Gate on social media and online: 12 M people

Barilla and Huffigton post’s video reached: 7 M people

-3.4 M people reached by Barilla’s Facebook post

-3.3 M people reached by Huffington Post (Italy)’s Facebook post

#CarbonaraGate on Twitter: 13.5 M impressions

In France searches for carbonara on Google tripled.

Page views of Carbonara recipe on academiabarilla.it increased by 1,300%: from 175 per day to 2.500 per day.