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.
Oscar Nominees Delve Into The Art Of Editing At ACE Session
You couldn’t miss Sean Baker at this past Sunday’s Oscar ceremony where he won for Best Picture, Directing, Original Screenplay and Editing on the strength of Anora. However, earlier that weekend he was in transit from the Cesar Awards in Paris and thus couldn’t attend the American Cinema Editors (ACE) 25th annual panel of Academy Award-nominated film editors held at the Regal LA Live Auditorium on Saturday (3/1) in Los Angeles. While the eventual Oscar winner in the editing category was missed by those who turned out for the ACE “Invisible Art, Visible Artists” session, three of Baker’s fellow nominees were on hand--Dávid Jancsó, HSE for The Brutalist; Nick Emerson for Conclave; and Myron Kerstein, ACE for Wicked. Additionally, Juliette Welfling, who couldn’t appear in person due to the Cesar Awards, was present via an earlier recorded video interview to discuss her work on Emilia Pérez. The interview was conducted by ACE president and editor Sabrina Plisco, ACE who also moderated the live panel discussion. Kerstein said that he was the beneficiary of brilliant and generous collaborators, citing, among others, director Jon M. Chu, cinematographer Alice Brooks, and visual effects supervisor Pablo Helman. The editor added it always helps to have stellar acting performances, noting that hearing Cynthia Erivo, for example, sing live was a revelation. Kerstein recalled meeting Chu some eight years ago on a “blind Skype date” and it was an instant “bromance”--which began on Crazy Rich Asians, and then continued on such projects as the streaming series Home Before Dark and the feature In The Heights. Kerstein observed that Chu is expert in providing collaborators with... Read More