BuzzFeed has long been adept at understanding themes, content and stories people find so interesting they’ll immediately want to share them, helping brands increase awareness and interest as a result. Now BuzzFeed is building on that knowledge in a different direction…helping partners develop new products.
In January, Ben Kaufman became CMO of BuzzFeed, signaling the increased importance of new product development and partnerships to BuzzFeed, and projected growth from this key revenue stream. Despite his relatively young age, Ben has been developing innovative products since he was a teenager. In high school, he developed Mophie, a portable, wireless charging base. In his late 20’s he founded and ran Quirky, a company that crowdsourced new product ideas and had an online community vote on whether to proceed with development support. General Electric was a partial investor. The most well-known product was a round, flexible surge protector called Quirky Pivot Power, still on sale today. In 2016, Ben came to BuzzFeed to head its new, in-house retail division, BuzzFeed Product Lab, since renamed BuzzFeed Commerce. Today it's part of BuzzFeed Marketing, with Ben CMO of all of BuzzFeed.
Leveraging the intellectual property created with their new platforms, BuzzFeed launched a cookware line with Walmart licensing the Tasty brand name. Tasty was born out of a test to innovate on food recipe media by cleverly changing the orientation of the video, shooting down on the food being prepared, as someone cooking would see it. With Macy’s, BuzzFeed co-developed a line of home goods under the Goodful name, based on the lifestyle platform launched several years ago. The Goodful line includes sheets, towels, cookware and an in-home garden system called AeroGarden.
Another example is BuzzFeed’s work with McCormick Spices to create five different Tasty Seasoning Blends based on emerging food trends and increased interest in global cuisine. The newline launched McCormick into the e-commerce, direct to consumer channel.
In addition to product development fees, BuzzFeed earns licensing revenue for use of its trademarks. The company works in a variety of different, bespoke ways with brands, as a product development innovation partner. BuzzFeed brings ideas based on trends they’re seeing, like the monthly subscription box concept, Lunarly, developed with Scotts Miracle-Gro. Lunarly sends household and wellness items based on their seasonal appropriateness and ability to thrive and grow at that time of year.
“We’re using our rich audience insights to not only develop content but also create lines of products that extend our brands into real life and help marketers solve some of their toughest challenges,” said Ben. “It’s a win-win when we can create products that we know our audience will love and serve a purpose in their lives, while also diversifying our business. These product extensions help us market our own brands and work with marketers in new and innovative ways.”
There's a growing trend of smart, strategic collaborations between retailers, brands and restaurants, with platforms that understand consumers based on their big data analytics, AI capabilities, and firsthand knowledge of search and social sharing by different target groups. Another notable product co-development example is the collaboration between Subway and Tastemade, another highly popular online recipe platform. Tastemade’s knowledge of new food trends is providing insights for Subway to guide new sandwich development.
Spotify last year won a Gold Reggie Award from the Association of National Advertisers for a partnership with Starbucks that helps customers determine new roasts of ground coffee to try based on flavor preference correlations with music listening habits. A range of Starbucks ground coffee ads were shown to consumers based on the type of music they listen to most. Dark and moody music listeners saw dark roast ads, and more upbeat music listeners saw light roast ads. Users who listened to a large mix of genres were invited to try the range of Starbuck's medium roasts, receiving a “flight of Starbucks Keurig coffee samples”, building on the analogy to tasting flights of fine wines and craft beers.
The Pinterest/Valspar paint collaboration that also won a Gold Reggie Award is another great example. People often have difficulty visualizing what color paint they would like to live with on their walls at home. To reduce that risk and increase customer post purchase satisfaction with their paint color choice, the Valspar Pinterest Analyzer predicts the color they'd find most aesthetically pleasing, based on colors of items that individual selects for their pin boards. In this context, Pinterest is being used as both a marketing research tool and a valuable shopping aide, giving Valspar Paint a competitive edge.
A great source of inspiration and ideas for new product and marketing program development is tapping into insights generated by firms most adept at social trend listening, who have huge databases that can be segmented by target personas. Many are eager to partner. Platforms like BuzzFeed, Tastemade, Spotify and Pinterest are expanding their business models and core competencies, applying their predictive analytics and trend insights to generate innovate new product ideas for strategic partners. New business models and revenue streams based on data and consumer knowledge can increase new product success odds for partners, and result in more relevant products and experiences for consumers.
