BuzzFeed’s Tasty is using cookie-baking demos to sell convection ovens for LG

“LG came to us expecting a fully standard campaign,” said Jake Bronstein, BuzzFeed’s head of partner innovation, but  the ultimate goal was to get the consumer all the way to the point of purchase, so they concocted something bigger.  

The campaign is an example of a shift BuzzFeed has made to bring to clients bigger programs that meld several elements of the BuzzFeed arsenal beyond the branded content campaigns that powered BuzzFeed for years. LG ran a content program with BuzzFeed a year ago that set the stage for this expanded program this year that will reach directly into retail.

“The moment of truth is in retail stores,” said Josie Salazar, senior brand manager for home appliances at LG Electronics USA.. “You have to have mass scale and reach, but you also have to drive the momentum beyond the awareness push.”

According to Salazar, this is the largest marketing campaign that LG’s cooking division has done. While not every campaign going forward will be to this scale, she said that it was important while LG was building out this division to have larger partnerships.

Noah Mallin, head of experience, content and sponsorship at Wavemaker, said that media companies have to position themselves as solution partners and to do so, they’ve been looking for ways to differentiate themselves to compete within the media set. Nowadays, scaling upwards beyond creating branded content and articles is necessary. 

“I think the traditional straight up content campaigns still have a market, but if you look at the trajectory, they won’t sustain mid-level companies.” 

Following significant layoffs at the beginning of they year, which resulted in a 15% headcount reduction and a realignment of its priorities, BuzzFeed recently restructured its sales strategy with the hopes of selling campaigns that touch more than one area of the business, specifically focus on brand licensing, commerce or product development opportunities.