Shortlisted 2022
Brand & Media Owner Partnership
Brand
InLombardia and Grana Padano
Entered by:
BBC Studios (BBC Storyworks)
Credits:
InLombardia and Grana Padano
Masters Of Lombardy
The Challenge
InLombardia and Grana Padano approached the BBC with an opportunity to promote their Autumn and Winter season to a wide audience of frequent travellers and encourage them to spend their holidays in Lombardy. In particular InLombardia wanted to build awareness of itself as a destination for the lakes, outdoor activities, food and wine experiences, the Italian lifestyle and exciting cities to explore including Milan and Bergamo.
This branded content series was a unique project as it was the first time BBC Storyworks, our in-house content studio, worked together with two separate clients in one campaign. InLombardia and Grana Padano wanted the content to promote the Lombardy region of Northern Italy to the travel curious whilst showcasing Grana Padano’s versatility as an ingredient in both modern and classic Italian cooking.
Our mission was to merge the interests of two very distinct brands with the interest of our audience.
The Masters of Lombardy campaign was rooted in our understanding of our audience. They want authentic travel experiences and for us to show them a new side to places they think they know. They love food and culture content that creates an emotional connection. From a production standpoint we wanted to produce content in the most sustainable way possible.
Objectives summary:
- Put the Lombardia region and its 12 provinces in the spotlight as a tourist destination showcasing what Lombardia has to offer.
- Place Grana Padano as a quality premium ingredient above competitors (other Italian hard cheeses).
- Showcase tradition but also innovation for both brands.
- Make content that truly align with BBC Travel audience (food index top in our audience insights).
- Deliver a full campaign with a lot of content in a cost effective and sustainable way.
The Content Solution
InLombardia and Grana Padano approached the BBC with an opportunity to promote their Autumn and Winter season to a wide audience of frequent travellers and encourage them to spend their holidays in Lombardy. In particular InLombardia wanted to build awareness of itself as a destination for the lakes, outdoor activities, food and wine experiences, the Italian lifestyle and exciting cities to explore including Milan and Bergamo.
This branded content series was a unique project as it was the first time BBC Storyworks, our in-house content studio, worked together with two separate clients in one campaign. InLombardia and Grana Padano wanted the content to promote the Lombardy region of Northern Italy to the travel curious whilst showcasing Grana Padano’s versatility as an ingredient in both modern and classic Italian cooking.
Our mission was to merge the interests of two very distinct brands with the interest of our audience.
The Masters of Lombardy campaign was rooted in our understanding of our audience. They want authentic travel experiences and for us to show them a new side to places they think they know. They love food and culture content that creates an emotional connection. From a production standpoint we wanted to produce content in the most sustainable way possible.
Objectives summary:
- Put the Lombardia region and its 12 provinces in the spotlight as a tourist destination showcasing what Lombardia has to offer.
- Place Grana Padano as a quality premium ingredient above competitors (other Italian hard cheeses).
- Showcase tradition but also innovation for both brands.
- Make content that truly align with BBC Travel audience (food index top in our audience insights).
- Deliver a full campaign with a lot of content in a cost effective and sustainable way.
The Media/Content Amplification Solution
Food and travel content is synonymous with photography and conventionalised stock imagery which makes it challenging to portray a consistent but multifaceted tone. We therefore opted for original photography and illustrations for our execution.
Illustration expanded our ability to navigate the intersections of Italian food, history and culture; infusing the dishes, and the Italian regions they belong to, with a wholesome and traditional personality that otherwise would not have been achieved. Using a traditional medium in a digital format allowed us to pay homage to the values and culture of the brand, whilst recreating the look and feel of the food’s colour, texture and shape.
Using illustration gave us an opportunity to interrupt the expected in a fast-paced digital content consumption world. This came to life through the digital series itself as well as a natural translation of creative to social media assets, and allowed us to achieve contrast against often oversaturated generic travel photography seen on these types of platforms.
With the clients being one, a tourism board and two, a specialty food product, the main aim was to create a content series that would tap into the readers’ desire to discover new experiences and flavours.
We wanted the readers to not only understand the chefs’ work but feel and imagine themselves in these beautiful locations and to taste the food. Therefore while describing the chefs’ personal experiences we were able to intertwine their stories with the wonders of their surroundings – the focus of the InLombardia tourism board – and the regional products – or product, the Grana Padano cheese – hence bringing together the demands of the client in a series of food and travel articles that was interesting to our audience.
All content sat on BBC.com with a social campaign served on Facebook and Twitter alongside the clients’ own channels. We ran a highly targeted campaign of display creatives across BBC.com to drive our audience to the content pages. All this based on the client objectives, markets, and audience to minimise waste. We layered on our 1st party audiences using our DMP Permutive, in order to ensure our most targeted and qualified audiences were served bespoke traffic drivers across bbc.com.
We also ran a comprehensive social media campaign for the series across Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter. Alongside using the illustrations on social media we created multiple assets, optimised to the different social platforms, to showcase the beautiful content.
The Result
In the 6 weeks of marketing the ‘Masters of Lombardy’ series we achieved 55,239 page views with an average dwell time of 110.2 seconds (well above the branded content benchmark). This was an incredible result with our quality BBC Audience way above benchmarking.
Engagement with the branded content page was particularly strong. Not only was the dish card page our most viewed page, 15% of page views included unique clicks to recipes and to other parts of the site.
The majority of recipes garnered over 500 PVs, with most around 1k. Many recipes also generated more on-site PVs than they got from Facebook, which supported the idea that users discovered the recipe pages on site and engaged well with the content.
Total Page Views on BBC.com – 55,239 (122% above benchmark)
Total Views on Social Channels – 1,754,029 (175% above benchmark)
Average Dwell Time – 110.2 secs (123% above benchmark)
Overall CTR – 0.17%
Highest CTR – 2.17%
From the original pitch creative we over delivered on assets and on quality. We created bespoke illustrations that where not in scope and original photography with the chefs and the locations.
We carried out a measurement study as part of this campaign to measure the effectiveness of our partnership. This was a test and control study with AdScore which proved that we increased recommendation (90%) and consideration (125%) for the brands and also increased positivity towards Grana Padano and InLombardia. Those questioned agreed that both brands are “brands I associate with high quality” (146% increase control vs exposed), a market leader (182% increase control vs exposed) and “a brand I love” (178% increase control vs exposed).
In summary the AdScore measurement study proved that the BBC was the right place for the brands to advertise and that we increased awareness, positivity, consideration, recommendation, and brand image.