[ibimage==32657==Large==none==self==null]Branded content is certainly nothing new, and content marketing tips for success are a dime a dozen these days, but the YouTube-sensation-turned-content-empire known as Tastemade has found success by -- some might say counterintuitively -- flipping the concept upside-down.
Rather than building a brand and releasing self-promoting content to get the word out or forming an agency and selling content production services to household brands, it's instead built a standalone platform so popular, those household brands have instead come to Tastemade, asking to play some small part in what it's already doing.
Based in Santa Monica, with a second office in downtown Austin, the food-centric company has built a community of more than 20 million followers and over 400 channels since its early days on the massively popular video sharing platform, raking in more than $40M in the last two years alone. Its first round, $5.3M in series A funding, was led by Redpoint Ventures in March 2013, followed by a $10M series B round several months later, led by Redpoint and Raine Ventures, and wrapped up with a $25 series C round this past June from its initial investors, plus three more from the media realm: Comcast Ventures, Liberty Media and Scripps Networks Interactive.
In fall 2014, it rolled out an array of original series, each one sponsored by the likes of AmEx, Chase, General Mills, Hyundai or a similar global brand. And perhaps the most compelling fact in the company's history is this: it's all taken place without any salespeople on the team. What began with Google ads running before each video has since grown into a lineup of brands approaching Tastemade proactively with ideas for branded content. Even Google itself has gotten in on the action with a food crawl show. As has Bravo, which partnered with the brand this year for a cross-promotional partnership to push shows on both platforms.
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“We’re very careful,” Tastemade's head of programming, Oren Katzeff, told The Wall Street Journal this fall. “We don’t do branded entertainment that may look and feel like a commercial. If you try and hide an ad in these types of shows, you’re in trouble. We are about creating great content and authentically weaving in brands.”
Doing its part to shift large advertisers' dollars away from television and into digital budgets, Tastemade is squarely rooted amid the sea change from traditional media buys to online ad spending. Its offerings also include online cooking classes and real-life kickoff events in each new city it enters -- to date, it has a presence in 22 cities around the globe, including Paris and Tokyo.
"Built for the mobile generation," as it claims, it's been ahead of the advertising curve for some time now, perhaps because it presents a brand based on content rather than the other way around.
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