Allan Chappelear, Chef Extraordinaire
When the Thermador team set out to build deeper relationships with their community of product owners, they knew they had to do something different.
The modern consumer is bombarded with 4,000-10,000 ads every day. Breaking through all that noise requires brands to get creative with how and where they tell stories. Increasingly fragmented viewership and the rise of ad-free or ad-limited streaming platforms has created an opportunity for brands that can create compelling content. Big brands like Pepsi, Mattel, and more are developing content that puts entertainment on par with brand awareness. That’s how Thermador and Tongal teamed up to create the At Home With My Thermador Range video series. The series stars real Thermador owner and chef Allan Chappelear, and is directed by filmmaker Dave Vorhes.
Ruth Prentice, Marketing Manager for Thermador, said it was an easy decision to greenlight the duo after watching their pitch. Allan’s fun, lighthearted nature, combined with his serious knowledge of cooking and being an existing Thermador owner, made him the perfect person for the job. The contrast between Thermador’s upscale brand and Allan’s casual demeanor was another big selling point.
The latest Thermador range, provided to Allan by the Brand
After selecting Allan and Dave from a group of pitches from Creators on Tongal, Thermador went above and beyond to make sure the team had everything they needed to represent the brand in its best light. From there, Tongal and the creators were off to the races. Their first video, a Holiday Feast, has been successful in driving high-quality engagement on social media. Prentice noted that engagement was not only higher, but also social comments focused more on lifestyle and community topics, rather than the more transactional comments seen on traditional marketing posts.
Thermador's Holiday Feast with Allan Chappelear
There are a lot of great lessons here for brands seeking to produce their own original series. In chatting with Ruth, several elements were most important in making this project a success. The first is to have top-down support to help champion the project. Beatriz Sandoval, Head of Marketing at Thermador, embraced the idea from day one. She had worked with Tongal on their Food Memories project back in 2015 and was excited to tap into the Tongal community again to experiment with something new. As open minded as the team was, Ruth went above and beyond to communicate the concept to her colleagues in PR and Marketing, something she encourages other marketers to do when they introduce an untested idea to their teams.
Thermador Food Memories Video
When trying out a new form of content, experiment is the key word. The second component that made this project successful was a “test, learn, iterate” mindset from day one. While many series are produced all at once and then distributed over a period of time, Ruth and team were intentional in filming one episode, carefully monitoring the numbers and qualitative data on social and making tweaks for the next episode. What the team looked for changed over the course of the season. In the first episode, they wanted to see Allan and Dave’s personalities and set a baseline for the show’s tone. With that released, they focused on layering in product information (showcasing a certain feature, for example) and timely topics based on engagement and social listening.
Lastly, take chances and trust your creators. Dave and Allan both loved their experience working with Thermador because they had the chance to play around and be themselves. It really looks like your friend with a Thermador teaching you to make a holiday feast.
“My favorite thing about working with Thermador has been their willingness to express the brand in a bold, new way. One look at their feed, website, or even just the product itself, and you can see Thermador is a polished, modern, luxury brand. For Thermador to embrace a tattoo’ed, quick-witted, non-professional chef shows they are not just open-minded, but proactively experimental with their marketing and community-building strategies.”
The result has been a series that has connected with viewers and driven conversations (and sales) around Thermador products. Some closing words of advice from the director:
“My advice to brands: Make shows. Don’t just sponsor shows. Make them yourself. You’ve built a broadcast network. Why not use it?”
