Dive Brief:
- Whole Foods will debut a television series called "Dark Rye" on the Gen-Y focused Pivot channel.
- The show will focus on issues of sustainability, social justice, technology, and other hot-button topics among young adults.
- "Dark Rye" makes its debut on Pivot tonight, Jan. 22, at 9:30 ET with an episode hosted by Kirk Lombard, a Bay Area fisherman and forager.
Dive Insight:
We expect "Dark Rye" to be truly wonderful. And that's not a common expectation for us when it comes to television or food marketing. But the TV series is a spinoff of Whole Foods' online magazine of the same name. And that extraordinarily gorgeous, well-produced site (it won a James Beard award in 2012) set a new standard for a) what online content can be, and b) how to reach Gen Y consumers.
Take a look at "Dark Rye" online. Watch the show tonight. Then look at the absurd ads that AB-InBev has created with Arnold Schwarzenegger and ask yourself: which of these two approaches speaks best to Gen Y?
