Dive Brief:

• Henkel, the marketer of Persil, Purex and other home care brands, is sponsoring the first three episodes of a new web series called "At Home With Jennifer," per a press release. Hosted by Webby Award-winning creator Jennifer Pate and a collaboration with her Feel Ageless brand, the series features wellness stories, interviews, advice and humor.
• The series will be distributed through video blockchain company Blockboard to provide "transparency and trust" for media buyers. The company claims its platform verifies where and how content is delivered and validates its performance, per the press release.
• Designed specifically to engage consumers during the pandemic, "At Home with Jennifer" is part of Henkel's international Ask Team Clean eCRM initiative, a digital hub which provides consumers with information, digital coupons, sweepstakes and other content. The first three episodes of the series is available across over-the-top (OTT) media, YouTube as well as Henkel's web site and social channels.

Dive Insight:

As consumers spend more time at home during the pandemic, the demand for original, informative programming has grown even stronger. To help satiate this desire, Henkel is teaming with a popular creator of wellness content to reach Gen X and baby boomer audiences, which command $22 trillion in spending power, per the release. The themes of the content series, which features episodes entitled "Family Chores," "Help with Sleep" and "Coping with Stress," seem particularly attuned to the challenges of the pandemic. Additional episodes of the series are available for other brands to own, per an email from Blockboard. 

"Our consumers look to us for important solutions to daily life, and this show and Jennifer speak to them in a way that makes it real," Ken Krasnow, vice president of omnichannel marketing at Henkel NA, said in the release. "The show is the perfect complement to our 'Ask Team Clean' initiative that is designed to help make our consumers’ lives better, cleaner and more fulfilling during these times."

Marketers see content marketing like this web series as an opportunity to engage consumers who are highly informed about products and services with engaging, entertaining content that builds relationships. More than half (52%) of marketers expressed a "strong commitment" to content marketing, double the amount who said the same two years earlier, according to recent survey conducted by the Association of National Advertisers and The Content Council. At the same time, 59% of respondents said there was a lack of actionable insights in current tracking measures.

Perhaps with that in mind, "At Home With Jennifer" will be distributed by Blockboard, a Manhattan-based company that uses blockchain technology to facilitate transparency and security for media buyers for social media and OTT videos. Blockchain is proving to be an intriguing technology for marketers for many of their initiatives, such as loyalty programs, digital ROI and fraud prevention. Companies ranging from Anheuser Busch Inbev, Pfizer, McDonald’s and Virgin Media have participated in various pilots of blockchain for different marketing programs.