Fresh off the heels of its biggest brand partnership and activation to date, Roku teamed up with three consumer packaged goods brands for shows from Roku Originals.
Coca-Cola, Henkel and Scott’s have all signed on as sponsors for three original shows: Emeril Tailgates, Children Ruin Everything and Martha’s Garden.
“It’s been interesting to see, especially given the challenges with CPG as a category this year, how much that vertical has leaned into wanting to test with Roku Originals, all in their own different way,” Katina Papas Wachter, Roku’s head of ad revenue strategy at The Roku Channel, told Adweek.
For Roku’s head of original content David Eilenberg, who joined the company earlier this year, lifestyle content made sense for these partnerships.
“It’s a category that has a lot of affinity for advertisers, sometimes in super obvious ways, sometimes less so,” Eilenberg said. “It’s a category that speaks to warmth, home and joy, and a lot of the things that those types of shows communicate, even advertisers that may not be directly having products that connect to the shows are showing interest in these programs.”
The partnership with Coca-Cola and chef Emeril Lagasse’s series Emeril Tailgates kicked off Roku’s fourth quarter, launching with the NFL season. Each episode focused on a team with a recipe or meal that fit with the team’s identity.
“Coca-Cola’s partnership with Roku and Chef Emeril Lagasse is a prime example of how we are consciously evolving our strategic marketing approach to ensure we’re authentically connecting with our consumers around our shared passions of food and sports,” Robin Triplett, head of E2E connections and media at Coca-Cola, said. “In partnership with Roku and in collaboration with Chef Emeril, we created original content that leaned into our audiences’ areas of interest across culture, food and sports.”
Coke sponsored the entire season, and integrations included vignettes with Lagasse out of the first commercial break—the first time Roku had tested custom pieces with brands. The company has since leaned into it further.
With Coke, Roku also launched scannable videos to find recipes and rotational videos throughout The Roku Channel.
Utilizing shoppable
During the company’s NewFronts presentation earlier this year, Roku revealed new shoppable ad experiences (as well as the shows with Martha Stewart and Lagasse). In addition, Roku and the brands are working together to test opportunities like scannable QR codes and active integrations.
Lifestyle series also lend themselves to shoppable formats since viewers want to utilize the information they learn from the shows for their own home improvement.
“Shoppable, some of the targeting tools, we think they’re a net plus for viewers, and that’s what we think makes this genre particularly good for partnerships,” Eilenberg said.
Scott’s and Martha’s Garden is the largest program of the three, which Roku attributed to Stewart being a fan of the product.
Martha’s Garden is released monthly, allowing viewers to watch Stewart’s actual garden in Bedford, NY, progress throughout the fall. The series included a Scott’s integration, a native home screen banner and tune-in reminders when a new episode was launching and custom vignettes.
“TV has been long painted and focused as an upper funnel, metric-driving medium,” Wachter said. “Roku gives not only CPGs, but all add verticals the opportunity to show upper funnel changes as well as mid and lower funnel.”
Roku is testing with the CPG brands to understand how engaging with the partners in a more comprehensive program can move viewers down the purchase funnel, including tests on the measurement side.
Henkel was a sponsor of the first season of Children Ruin Everything and is returning for Season 2. The show is now category exclusive to them for the length of the sponsorship. Using Roku’s targeting, only viewers who had not watched the season saw Henkel branding and sponsorship.
“It was net new content, net new show that Henkel was bringing to them, which was really exciting and that’s a very turnkey way that we can work with these brands,” said Wachter.
Just the beginning
“We’re really in a phase where learning what different types of placements are both valuable to the viewer and to the advertiser,” Wachter said. “I think the best partnerships we can build are things that do both well.”
Roku first launched its branded content studio in 2021 and debuted Roku Originals a month later. The company is still new to the originals space but is working to quickly scale in terms of both content and partnerships.
In October, Roku partnered with T-Mobile for Weird, its biggest original yet, and launched a 360 activation both on- and off-platform.
“The next phase for us is going to be a lot about activations of different sorts, both on-platform and off,” Eilenberg said. “We’ve had great experiences so far, and now it’s what other behaviors do we want our viewers to engage in, on their own behalf and on behalf of the brand that’s partnering with us on the activation?”
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