During season 1 of our series Family Style; from Stage 13 and the creative minds of Justin Lin's production company YOMYOMF a short-form series focused on Asian food and pop culture featuring Asian talent in front and behind the camera including a rotating group of Asian American hosts or "Foodie Fam" exploring not just the cuisine but the people at table, such as The Good Doctor star Daniel Dae Kim, 13 Reasons Why star Ross Butler, and Crazy Rich Asians director Jon M. Chu, among others; there were two separate food segments that involved SPAM. Unprompted, SPAM found one of the segments and shared it to their audience. We soon connected with SPAM's agency for a small partnership opportunity at a Family Style event of ours. For season 2, we reached out to SPAM for a bigger partnership opportunity to be integrated into the series to reach a U.S.-based audience. SPAM agreed, and the objectives for the branded content were:
1) A fun SPAM-focused segment in the series featuring SPAM in a variety of dishes
2) Original SPAM branded social content on our social pages
Halfway through filming season 2, the COVID-19 pandemic hit, shutting down production for months. When production was able to start again, we were very limited in what we could do in terms of going to restaurants or having gatherings, and Family Style being an unscripted series relying on traveling, we were forced to pivot the direction for the back-half of our production, including our planned SPAM segment, which was to film everything remotely. Talent was sent film kits with cameras and lighting equipment, also leveraging talent's personal phones/tablets/computers as secondary cameras through Zoom.
In order to keep the SPAM segment fun, the revised plan was to hold a cooking competition with three of the Foodie Fam members. They were all sent the same box with a variety of ingredients including the main ingredient of SPAM Classic. The competition would be judged by Chef Dale Talde, best known for competing on two seasons of the Bravo reality television cooking competition series Top Chef: Chicago and Top Chef: All-Stars. Since the shoot was remote, Chef Talde wouldn't be able to taste any of the competitor's dish, and would instead judge on creativity, technique, and how the dish looks. Additionally, the cast and judge would be conversing throughout, leaving ample opportunities to mention the brand organically in terms of the competition as well as personal stories.
For the second objective of original SPAM branded social content, we created
All of the content would be shared and engaged with by the SPAM social accounts, who would be tagged as Brand Partners. Additionally, the cooking competitors along with Chef Dale Talde also promoted the segment and episode, reaching their networks.
The episode featuring the SPAM segment was the third most viewed episode of the 8-episode season on both YouTube and Facebook Watch with over 220K views and 21K engagements. The social posts generated over 10K views and 1K engagements. SPAM was very happy with the final product and results of the domestic campaign and are already up to partner again for season 3!
