Digital marketing of online food delivery services in a social media platform before and during COVID-19 pandemic in Brazil

Objective: To describe the promotion of food and beverage and marketing strategies used by online food delivery services (OFDS) in a social media platform before and during the pandemic in Brazil. Design: Publicly available data were extracted from OFDS Instagram accounts. Posts published 6 months immediately before and after the first case of COVID-19 in Brazil were randomly sampled. Two independent authors coded the posts' content. Food and beverage items featured in posts were classified according to the NOVA food system classification. Marketing strategies were coded according to protocols from previous studies. Setting: Top three OFDS Instagram accounts in Brazil. Participants: Posts published in the period studied (n 304). Results: During the pandemic, the proportion of posts featuring at least one food item decreased from 71 center dot 6 % to 40 center dot 2 %, and the proportion of ultra-processed foods decreased from 57 center dot 6 % to 27 center dot 9 %. Before the pandemic, the most widely used marketing strategies were branding elements (80 center dot 7 %), product imagery (unbranded) (48 center dot 9 %) and partnerships/sponsorship (35 center dot 2 %). While during the pandemic, branding elements (62 center dot 2 %) continued to be the most applied, but were followed by the use of videos/graphics interchange format/boomerangs (34 center dot 1 %) and corporate social responsibility (31 center dot 7 %). The most frequent COVID-19 marketing strategies were 'social responsibility in the pandemic' (30 center dot 5 %), 'combatting the pandemic' (28 center dot 0 %) and 'accelerating digitalisation' (20 center dot 7 %). Conclusions: OFDS advertisements on a social media platform placed less emphasis on food items, but improved the nutritional quality of foods and beverages featured in posts. A COVID-washing approach was highlighted, especially through the use of social responsibility marketing during the pandemic.