Andy Allen and Ben Milbourne met on Masterchef. Andy Allen won it. They have a ready to use celebrity profile and fans. “The two mates on an adventure” format works in comedy, and works for food. Old El Paso, and creators, Projuce, have just found out that it also works for both together, and works for a brand.
The branded content, a five part web series called Andy and Ben Do Mexico, was created and produced by Sydney new media house, Projucer, and published on Andy Allen’s own Youtube channel earlier this year.
The boys embark on a best mates journey – basically eating their way through Mexico. Old El Paso saw it as an extra marketing opportunity that would give a fresh new feel to the brand and jumped on board.
Using branded content in tandem with traditional marketing is a tried and true package for sports and liquor brands. But this was all new for Old El Paso, who gave branded content a go to give it an edge, especially with younger and trendier audiences as well as Masterchef fans. Old El Paso also collaborated with Andy to create his own signature easy-to-make dishes using its products in a series of videos published on his YouTube channel. A 15 second tailor-made ‘pre-roll’ YouTube video was also produced.
So far, so good. 96% of viewers have been Australian views. 97% of viewers watched the tailored, skippable pre-roll advertisement in full. And the series performed above average across both social media interactions and YouTube viewer ratings. It also recorded viewer retention of 60% across the series, which for long-form branded content (4 – 10 mins) is extremely rare.
Managing partner at Projucer, Josh Capelin, noted, “For an initial investment into our multi-platform opportunity, Old El Paso was able to effectively leverage and licence our content across multiple platforms for multiscreen experiences, including Foxtel, to reach different audience segments. While doing the numbers with their media agency, we estimated that during this period, content featuring Old El Paso’s products or brand has been watched for over 1500 hours. In an age when people’s attention spans are continually getting shorter, this is a stellar result for the brand.”
Projucer has been rewarded with the go ahead to produce Series 2, Andy & Ben Do Spain & Portugal, of which they’ve already released some behind the scenes video diaries. In this adventure, the boys go wild mushroom hunting near Barcelona, get a taste of the King of Spain’s favourite dish in Madrid, and enjoying a helicopter flight over Lisbon followed by a seafood feast with Portuguese TV chef and restaurateur, Jose Avillez.
Projucer is also inviting conversations that lead to brand integration opportunities with Andy & Ben for the global online and national TV release of the Andy & Ben Do… series in 2015.
