KUALA LUMPUR – Panasonic kicks off another season of “Love to Cook” collaboration with Asian Food Channel (AFC), marked by the regional premiere of “Martin Yan’s Asian Favourites (Season 2)” cooking show in January.
An AFC original production featuring Celebrity Chef Martin Yan, who has over 20 years of culinary experience, Chef Yan shares tricks of the trade and insider knowledge on how to achieve great tasting local food using Panasonic kitchen appliances.
Commenting on the partnership, Group Director of Dentsu LHS, Dai Sugime, whose creative agency was responsible for facilitating the collaboration as well as providing brand consultancy for Panasonic, said that the partnership has enjoyed good synergy and traction since the idea for a project of this scale was mooted almost two years ago.
“Southeast Asia is a region that is rich in food culture. Our insights show that many people love the idea of enjoying hearty home-cooked meals with family and friends but shy away from cooking at home as cooking is often perceived as an arduous, time-consuming and complicated task. However, that’s not usually the case, so we were on a mission to demonstrate how easy and fun cooking can be with Panasonic Cooking’s range of kitchen appliances,” Sugime shared.
Through AFC, celebrity chefs were engaged to prepare their recipes using Panasonic’s kitchen appliances and showcased them on their cooking programmes.
“As the only regional channel dedicated to Asian cuisine, AFC, which reaches 21 million households in Asia, is indeed a fantastic platform to leverage on to showcase Panasonic Cooking’s products through culinary entertainment. We’re glad to be collaborating with Panasonic for this massive branding exercise, covering 11 countries in this region,” Sugime added.
In late 2016, the branded content first piloted on AFC Season 2 of “Cooking for Love”, hosted by celebrity chefs Sarah Benjamin and Nik Imran, which ran for 6 episodes on AFC. This sponsorship continued after that for 8 episodes in Season 1 of “Martin Yan’s Asian Favourites”, another 8 episodes in Season 3 of “Family Kitchen with Sherson”, and most recently in Season 3 of “Cooking for Love”, which last aired in November 2017.
Survey for year one of the sponsorship showed very encouraging and positive results. Some key highlights to-date:
97% of viewers think Panasonic products were well integrated into the programme.
When asked if they intend to buy Panasonic kitchen appliances after watching the programme, an average 76% of viewers scored between 8 to 10, with 10 being a definite buy.
28 cooking videos, featuring the celebrity chefs using Panasonic kitchen appliances, were posted on various digital and social media platforms such as AFC’s Facebook page, which garnered a whopping 26 million views.
84 original recipes created, all prepared using Panasonic kitchen appliances.
“It’s so much more than just a typical sponsorship or product placement. The goal is to cultivate a lifestyle of home-cooking via sharing of culinary knowledge. We’re happy to be working with Panasonic to drive this in Southeast Asia,” Sugime concluded.
In main image (Clockwise from top left): Martin Yan’s Asian Favourites; Cooking for Love hosted by Sarah Benjamin (top right) and Nik Imran (bottom right); and Family Kitchen with Sherson.
