Wilton Cake Decorating wanted to do something big in 2015. Rosanna Pansino of Nerdy Nummies caught our attention - as she has for millions of others - with her fun, quirky and unique sweet treat ideas. Ro already worked with a number of Wilton products in her YouTube episodes and we knew partnering with her would build an incredible creative collaboration for her YouTube audience as well as Wilton's. The natural pairing allowed Wilton to get in front of Ro's audience - a much younger demographic - and reach millions of new consumers.
Our partnership was unique because we collaborated with Ro regularly for a more natural integration. Ro's creativity and unique sweet treat projects are a key part of the appeal to her audience, and we wanted our videos to feel as natural as possible to viewers.
Wilton and Kin Community – a leading Multi-Channel Network that Ro is part of – approached the partnership with a dual posting strategy. Throughout 2015, Ro created 10 video projects for her YouTube channel that featured different Wilton products. In conjunction with her project videos, she also created accompanying product vignettes which went live on Wilton's YouTube channel. Ro linked to these extra videos through the description in each of her videos, helping drive new viewers to Wilton's YouTube.
We know Ro's audience found our brand of value to them because roughly 72,000 people subscribed to our channel and continue to engage with our channel now. We have not seen a drop in subscribers or engagement and continue to see growth in both areas. The partnership with Ro produced a halo effect for all of the videos on Wilton's YouTube channel. Subscriber views of non-Ro videos increased by 113 percent between March and June of 2015, compared with that same time frame in 2014. In 2015, Wilton received a 396 percent increase in likes, 459 percent increase in comments, and overall 123 percent increase in engagement on their YouTube channel.
