Marie-Laure Marchand: "One of our strategies is to go beyond social media"

Chefclub has conquered the social media world with its food content, reaching 150 million followers and 2.5 billion global views a month. "Our positioning is extremely clear. We mix food and entertainment and the combination of both is part of our success," indicated Marie-Laure Marchand, SVP Global Consumer Products & Business Development at the company. The executive also highlighted that home cooking is booming nowadays and Chefclub makes it fun. "We use ordinary ingredients that everybody has in the kitchen and create extraordinary recipes, so we really appeal to the whole audience, internationally and across all generations,” she added.

Currently, Chefclub’s strategy is to go beyond social media, the company has established a big catalog and is diversifying its content production. This year, Chefclub inked an agreement with Pluto TV to bring over a hundred episodes of cookery content to the US and Latin America, home to 40 million of Chefclub’s global subscribers. "Almost half of our views today comes from the United States, a key market for us. Latin America is also important for us, we have had a huge audience since the beginning, especially in Brazil, Mexico and Argentina", said Marchand. The food brand has sealed a programming partnership with Univision’s streaming service ViX, allowing Chefclub’s branded programming to be accessed by Hispanic households across the Spanish-speaking US and Latin America. "We are looking for new ways of reaching more audiences, different ones, and FAST and connected TV are one of them," indicated the SVP Global Consumer Products & Business Development. "We have the maturity, the size and the diversification to really attract these kinds of partners."

NEW LAUNCHES
As part of its diversification strategy, the studio is creating a variety of new lifestyle series for Gen Z and Millennial food lovers in longer formats, ideally suited for traditional TV programming. These include “Discoveries,” a show that goes outside the studio to discover how certain ingredients are made, a vegetarian show that entertains viewers with trompe l’oeil creations, and “Cake & Cocktail” to name a few. "We have 15 new programs concepts in production at the moment," Marchand added.

On the other hand, Chefclub announced a co-production partnership with Somewhere Animation, part of Mediawan Kids & Family group, on "Chefclub Adventures", a new animated series based on the brand’s iconic characters, Chef Maurice and his friends Lola, Carlton, Colette, Elvis and the Kikitos. We are very excited about this project," mentioned the executive. "It was selected at MIP Junior as one of the top highlights of this year," she added. “Chefclub Adventures” is aimed at pre-school children aged 4 to 7 and in each 11-minute episode, the foodies travel the world to find surprising and unique ingredients and recipes. Along their adventures, they feel the joy of sharing and learn about the importance of friendship and family. "We are looking for co-production partners, broadcasters and platforms."

Children are an important focus for Chefclub: its Chefclub Kids creative videos are very popular with families and especially women aged 25-45. The company has also developed a wide range of kid-friendly products which has received tremendous appeal among families so far. Finally, the Chefclub Friends, wacky, loveable and identifiable characters, will be featured in various formats for a kid’s audience, beyond “Chefclub Adventures”. “We are creating hybrid content for kids, mixing live action recipes, with our animated characters, which will extend the brand experience for the younger audience,” she concluded.