There’s probably no food more American than hot dogs. And “In Search of Real Food,” Unilever’s 12-week series of webisodes that began playing at Yahoo! Food June 28, started with a film from Park Slope, Brooklyn, where Willie’s Dawgs, a homegrown business prepares delicious dogs with all the fixings.
“The point of the show is to travel across America to see what real Americans are eating and cooking,” said Kim Martin, senior VP of Embassy Row, the production company that joined forces with Bobby Flay, the celebrity chef, to launch Rock Shrimp Productions, which produced the series with Ogilvy & Mather.
Each weekly show will include four webisodes, including a user-generated segment, which in the first program featured the Vendley brothers, who cook Western style tacos. “We loved them because they are originally from California and moved to New York and they were missing the food they grew up with, so they decided to open a taco stand in downtown Manhattan,” Martin said.
Production teams will travel to Moab, UT, and the Gilroy Garlic Festival in Gilroy, Calif., for future episodes.
The goal is to promote Hellmann’s mayonnaise, which is as real as the foods shown in the webisodes because it’s made with real ingredients, including eggs and oil and vinegar. “The creative team was developing new positioning for Hellmann’s focused on real food,” said Doug Scott, executive director of branded content and entertainment at Ogilvy & Mather. “We were tasked with going beyond the advertising into other forms of marketing so we developed the idea to search for real food and look at real people.”
The videos star Dave Lieberman, a Food Network chef, who talks with consumers about their real food and prepares recipes, which in the first show was potato salad with Hellmann’s. “We’re establishing a link between product positioning and the idea of real food,” Scott said.
“Consumer research was done and people had a misconception of what was in mayonnaise,” he said. “They didn’t think it was real, so based on those insights we found a sweet spot in the marketing about what to communicate. It reinforces the idea of real food and allows the consumer to engage in a dialogue.”
Consumers can submit their own real food videos at the site, which could be included in future episodes.
The webisodes were shot with MiniDVs, with editing done on Avid with a small documentary crew, Martin said.
Embassy Row is a production company that specializes in culinary programming, including Boy Meets Grill, a Food Network show starring Bobby Flay that began in 2002. Rock Shrimp Productions unites Flay with Martin and Michael Davies, the president/CEO of Embassy Row. Flay and Martin are executive producers. It’s the first Rock Shrimp endeavor.
A Yahoo spokesperson said Yahoo! Food receives 4.3 million visitors per month, and has played video content for other advertisers, including Kraft and Pillsbury. The Hellman’s webisodes will play for 12 weeks, then remain on Yahoo! Food until the end of the year.
Apple and Google Face UK Investigation Into Mobile Browser Dominance
Apple and Google aren't giving consumers a genuine choice of mobile web browsers, a British watchdog said Friday in a report that recommends they face an investigation under new U.K. digital rules taking effect next year.
The Competition and Markets Authority took aim at Apple, saying the iPhone maker's tactics hold back innovation by stopping rivals from giving users new features like faster webpage loading. Apple does this by restricting progressive web apps, which don't need to be downloaded from an app store and aren't subject to app store commissions, the report said.
"This technology is not able to fully take off on iOS devices," the watchdog said in a provisional report on its investigation into mobile browsers that it opened after an initial study concluded that Apple and Google effectively have a chokehold on "mobile ecosystems."
The CMA's report also found that Apple and Google manipulate the choices given to mobile phone users to make their own browsers "the clearest or easiest option."
And it said that the a revenue-sharing deal between the two U.S. Big Tech companies "significantly reduces their financial incentives" to compete in mobile browsers on Apple's iOS operating system for iPhones.
Both companies said they will "engage constructively" with the CMA.
Apple said it disagreed with the findings and said it was concerned that the recommendations would undermine user privacy and security.
Google said the openness of its Android mobile operating system "has helped to expand choice, reduce prices and democratize access to smartphones and apps" and that it's "committed to open platforms that empower consumers."
It's the latest move by regulators on both sides of the Atlantic to crack down on the... Read More