By Ken Liebeskind
NEW YORK --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.
TikTok and the U.S. Face Off In Court Over Law That Could Lead To A Ban Of The Popular Platform
TikTok faced off with the U.S. government in federal court on Monday, arguing a law that could ban the platform in a few short months was unconstitutional while the Justice Department said the measure is critical to eliminate a national security risk posed by the popular social media company.
Attorneys for the two sides - and content creators - appeared before a panel of three judges at a federal appeals court in Washington, where TikTok and its China-based parent company, ByteDance, are challenging the law that is forcing them to break ties by mid-January or lose one of their biggest markets in the world.
Andrew Pincus, a veteran attorney representing the two companies, argued in court that the law unfairly targets the company and runs afoul of the First Amendment because TikTok Inc. - the U.S. arm of TikTok - is an American entity. Another attorney representing creators who are also challenging the law also argued it violates the rights of U.S. speakers and is akin to prohibiting Americans from publishing on foreign-owned media outlets, such as Politico, Al Jazeera or Spotify.
"The law before this court is unprecedented and its effect would be staggering," Pincus said, adding the act would impose speech limitations based on future risks.
The law, signed by President Joe Biden in April, was the culmination of a years-long saga in Washington over the short-form video-sharing app, which the government sees as a national security threat due to its connections to China.
The U.S. has said it's concerned about TikTok collecting vast swaths of user data, including sensitive information on viewing habits, that could fall into the hands of the Chinese government through coercion. The U.S. also says the proprietary algorithm that fuels... Read More