Dive Brief:
- J.M. Smucker peanut butter brand Jif announced a partnership with actor Neil Patrick Harris to promote its new Jif Power Ups snacks via a news release. Harris hosted "The Parenting Struggle is Real…Funny" on Facebook Live on June 26.
- During show, Harris re-enacted real-life, user-submitted parenting stories with other comedian parents. The Broadway and television veteran is the father of 7-year-old twins.
- Jif Power Ups come in two varieties, Chewy Bars and Creamy Clusters, and a handful of flavors. The snacks are individually wrapped, list peanuts as the first ingredient and contain no high fructose corn syrup and 6 grams of protein per serving.
Dive Insight:
By partnering with Harris, Jif can potentially tap into a growing trend dubbed "sharenting," where parents post pictures and news about their children to connect with other parents online in an authentic way. Harris regularly shares pictures of his kids and parenting moments on social media, making him a potentially strong partner to help launch a new line of snack products targeted at kids.
The marketer crowd-sourcing parenting stories for Facebook Live might have also helped to make viewers feel more involved and engaged with the content. Jif is the latest brand to leverage Facebook Live to recreate the feeling of live TV programing, including through a game show or talk show format. Facebook is trying to ramp up its focus on video content that is interactive or includes a high amount of audience participation, and last week added a number of features to Live, including polling and gamification tools, to help meet those goals.
Nearly 95% of surveyed brand and retail executives have said live video will be an important part of their marketing strategy this year, per findings from Brandlive and IBM Cloud Video. According to a study by Likeable, video continues to outperform other content types on Facebook by "a statistically significant margin."
