AOL and Time Warner Global Media Group joined forces with General Motors Corp. for three video series on AOL featuring cooking, home entertaining and home improvement workshops with leading lifestyle experts.
The series, which can be viewed at http://living.aol.com, are “Cooking With Tyler Florence,” “Home Entertaining With Michele and Gia” and “Home Improvement With Eric Stromer.” Available free and on-demand, the three series offer AOL visitors a total of 78 unique three- to five-minute online video episodes.
“The AOL/GMC partnership is consistent with AOL’s overarching programming and ad sales goals, which are to provide relevant content to our audience,” said Kathy Kayse, executive vice president of AOL sales and partnership alliances, Dulles, VA. “While we’ll continue to do some licensing of content, we are committed to original programming. Big partners like General Motors are continually looking for ways to integrate their products throughout programming.”
Each series incorporates one of GMC’s vehicles in action: the GMC Yukon in the “Cooking” segments, the GMC Acadia in “Home Entertaining” and the GMC Sierra in the “Home Improvement” segments. In addition, GMC ads are shown as pre-roll during half of the shows’ streams, and the company will command part of the program home pages’ banner ads.
Each video can be distilled into smaller, more portable components, including photo galleries, audio podcasts, printable instructions and send-to-phone capabilities. Also, the series include 20 custom, sidebar GMC-branded “Trade Secrets” videos, spotlighting tips from these experts. The “Trade Secrets” segments echo GMC’s “Professional Grade” branding campaign, aligning professional tricks and insights from lifestyle gurus with the company’s message.
The three shows aim for different audiences. In “Cooking With Tyler Florence,” the celebrity chef demonstrates in step-by-step fashion how to prepare his AOL-exclusive recipes such as Pomegranate Rosemary Roasted Turkey. The show has a dual, male and female audience, and the GMC Yukon targets this same audience.
“Home Entertaining With Michele and Gia” stars the MiGi Girls from the Fine Living Network show “The Art of the Party.” Michele and Gia illustrate party themes ranging from Halloween and tree trimming ideas to Super Bowl soirees and baby showers. The program skews female and aligns with the GMC Acadia. “Home Improvement With Eric Stromer” is a do-it-yourself show starring the author of the book “Do-It-Yourself Family.” This show skews male and fits the GMC Sierra.
“Partnering with AOL provides us with the perfect opportunity to interact with our target consumer in a new way and on a more emotional level than traditional advertising through innovative programming at an interactive level,” said Mary Kubitskey, advertising manager at GMC, Detroit. “With emerging media it’s about emotional engagement. Consumers choose to interact with the product. As we all know, traditional 30-second spots aren’t as effective as they were in the past.”
AOL, GMC team on home, cooking shows
