UGC + Influencer Content
I’ve led multiple teams focused on highly shareable UGC-style video content, including partnerships with influencers and creators, plus marketing content.
These shortform and midform social videos garnered hundreds of millions of views.
Producers: Destiny Liley, Ellyse O’Halloran, Melanie Owens, Marie Koury, Cayla Deregis, Vicky Ooi, Heather Lanphar, Allison Faccenda
Interactive Video
From 2019-2021, I was the Creative Director for BuzzFeed’s multimillion-dollar partnership with Eko, an interactive video technology company. I oversaw creative strategy for concepting, scripting, production, post-production and distribution for dozens of interactive episodes. These came to life with a few incredible production vendors, including Hatchback Productions and Butcher Bird Studios.
Here’s a fun teaser made by Hatchback featuring some of the work we did together:
A few favorite episodes:
Quizzes
Only Gen Z-ers Can Make It Through A Day At This Interactive High School
We tapped directly into the zeitgeist with this extremely silly game quizzing if you know enough slang, memes and trends to make it through a day of a “modern” high school. This episode spent a day trending on Twitter as hundreds of 30-somethings were moved to share that they were classified as a “teen.”
The response to this cheeky quiz was above and beyond. TBH, we didn’t expect the over-the-moon reaction we got from viewers of this video, many of whom fell in love with the Perfect Man they were assigned, and then urgently tagged their friends to build their own personal hunk.
Food
Make It Fancy is one of BuzzFeed’s most popular franchises, starring the effervescent Rie McClenney. For this special episode we worked closely with her team to create an experience that let viewers cook poutine alongside Rie. The fans were obsessed!
A delicious and beautifully shot quiz that taps into the ASMR cooking trend, but interactive. Choose between building your ideal brownie recipe, or your perfect mac ‘n’ cheese. Personally, I want to eat all of them.
Parenting
Inspired by one of the most popular Playfull videos, this mobile-first interactive tool teaches you simple sign language words in a variety of baby-friendly categories
Also inspired by a Playfull video, this simple quiz offers parents a variety of DIY craft ideas for kids of all ages that’ll liven up the dullest of days. With the chance to choose between age groups, messiness levels, and DIY skills, there’s something cool for every kid (and parent!).
Executive Producer: Zee Myers
Senior Creative Director: Rachel Zarrell
Senior Project Manager: Chou Yam
Directors: Kirk Larsen, Steven Calcote
+ many others!
Tasty x Eko
In 2020, I oversaw creative for a batch of the Webby-nominated Tasty x Eko series, which we produced and shot in-house at BuzzFeed Studios in LA.
This interactive recipe build let users cook their ideal Tasty recipe, with each of the 10 videos having anywhere from 16 to 32 unique and mouthwatering outcomes. Once they completed the experience, users were presented with a printable recipe so they could actually make their custom meal at home.
Check out these videos on Walmart’s interactive Cookshop destination.
Executive Producer: Zee Myers
Senior Creative Director: Rachel Zarrell
Directors: Candice Vernon, Matt Real
Producer: Tony Wilson
+ many others!
CAMP by Walmart
When nearly the whole world went remote in early 2020, BuzzFeed had the opportunity to create some fun and joy online, through a free virtual summer camp on the Walmart app. BuzzFeed, Eko, Camp toy stores and Walmart teamed up — with BuzzFeed as the lead production partner — to create an exciting daily camp experience offering interactive games, classes, and family-friendly entertainment. Plus, the whole experience was shoppable, with play moments seamlessly integrated with Walmart products kids love.
This was a massive undertaking with the narrowest of deadlines to produce dozens of interactive episodes entirely remotely, which we kicked off with a team of 70 people. As Senior Creative Director, I led creative and supported production efforts for various series, including overseeing concepting, script writing and execution, and supporting talent negotiation and contracting.
Camp by Walmart launched in July 2020 with Neil Patrick Harris as Head Counselor; BuzzFeed produced six of the series offerings. Shows included Make It Awesome, a fun craft tutorial, and Snacktivity, a game to build your perfect adorable snack.
One personal favorite was Crazy Contraptions, a series to make your own Rube Goldberg machine, for which I brought on YouTube star Joseph Herscher of Joseph’s Machines. Joseph built us four custom Rube Goldberg machines that viewers could interact with in order to make it to an amazing and surprising end result. Unfortunately, the shows are not currently accessible online, but I’ve added a few previews and screenshots below.
Executive Producer: Zee Myers
Senior Creative Director: Rachel Zarrell
Senior Project Manager: Chou Yam
Creative Director for Animation: Nick Butera
Post Supervisor: Mars Benjamin
Associate Director of Production: Stephen Santayana
Supervising Producer: Michael Wickham
Senior Design Lead: Katia Oloy
Producers: Melanie Owens, Candice Vernon, Tony Wilson, Carol Tan, Patrick Mulberger, Matthew Gustafson, Michael Rose
Creative Programmers: Stefanie Cage, Yoobin Han, Zach Krall, Juli Oromo, Jon Strahs
Writers: Liza Palmer, Erin Chack, Loryn Brantz
+ Many many others!
Bellesa Boutique
Bellesa is an adult toy company known for their feminist approach to sexual empowerment. In late 2020 they partnered with BuzzFeed to create a ~buzzy~ new product line. My team was approached to help raise awareness of the new toys among female-identifying millennial and Gen Z viewers with organic social video.
We came up with a slate of inclusive, vlog-style content ideas for Instagram that would support Bellesa in reaching a broad and open-minded audience. In order to show a variety of personal experiences with the product line, we tapped into micro-influencers and diverse, relatable talent. The breakout star was “Virgins Try Vibrators For The First Time,” a revealing and surprisingly moving look at two women who prove that sexuality is not one-size-fits-all.
The videos greatly exceeded all KPIs, selling thousands of products and getting over 4M views across Instagram. Best of all, the clients were thrilled, writing: “I couldn’t imagine a better video. So genuine and reflective of the experience SO many first time buyers have. It felt nothing like an advertisement. Literal 10/10.”
Executive Producer: Rachel Zarrell
Producers: Janna Macatangay, Merle Shane O’Neal, Destiny Liley, Nadia Honary-Satriano, Chelsea Lloyd
News and Storytelling
Highly shareable social-first news and narrative content I oversaw at MTV News and BuzzFeed.
Supervising Producer: Rachel Zarrell
Creative Director: Mark Lisanti
Producers/Editors: Jesse Loyd, Hunter Boone, Rialda Zukic, Ben Berlin, Cailley Lombardo, Matt Strickland
Walmart Grocery
In 2021, Walmart wanted to show the Tasty audience how they could make and affordable and delicious meals under $20 by shopping at their grocery stores. The aim was to create an authentic content presence on social that fit with the Tasty brand, featuring UGC-style videos distributed organically.
My Shoppable Video team made this happen for them with a slate of shortform recipe videos for Tasty featuring TikTok food influencer @pierzza. The videos each featured a tempting (and vegetarian!) Tasty recipe chosen based on insights from their audience plus cultural food trends. Each meal was also made using a different clever gadget (which, naturally, you could also purchase at Walmart).
The series’ biggest hit was Air Fryer Buffalo Cauliflower, which saw massive engagement and reach and had over 3K comments.
The videos were highly successful due to their mouthwatering food shots and healthy, practical recipes, and garnered over 10M views across Instagram and Tiktok.
Executive Producer: Rachel Zarrell
Lead Producer: Destiny Liley
NBCUniversal + Playfull
NBC has long been one of BuzzFeed’s most meaningful partners and investors. As part of their investment, they asked BuzzFeed to join them to launch a new parenting brand to reach a younger generation of millennial parents. After many sessions of brainstorming, name ideating, and brand defining, Playfull was born.
As the Supervising Producer and Brand Lead for Playfull, I led all content operations and brand strategy. This meant overseeing video and editorial teams creating hundreds of pieces of social-first content within the parenting space, including food, DIY, narratives, viral UGC videos, and humor content. Our content was thoughtful, diverse and inclusive, and offered parents clever and creative ideas for raising all types of kids.
Playfull was a big success, garnering 2MM fans in its first year and over one billion video views, in addition to deepening our partnership with NBCUniversal. Our content approach of testing and learning enabled my team to create dozens of social video hits that tapped into exactly the young, digital-focused parenting audience we set out to reach.
Additional projects I contributed to during this time included consulting on multiple Today Show segments, a tongue-in-cheek video with Charlize Theron on the beauty of motherhood, and a TV spot that ran during the 2018 Olympics. I also led development for sponsored partnerships with major national brands like Subaru and AT&T.
A sampling of some beloved Playfull hits:
Supervising Producer: Rachel Zarrell
Producers + Writers: Sarah Rasmussen, Katie Sadler, Ashley Monda, Joe Hegyes, Francesco Ferrara, Tiger Souvannakoumane, Krista Torres, Mike Spohr, Asia McClain
Social Leads: James Harness, Emma Tyler
Head of Strategic Initiatives: Hannah Bricker
Tasty Shoppable Recipes
Walmart and BuzzFeed have a deep and longstanding creative partnership; one of the best innovations to emerge from it is the Shoppable Recipes feature on the Tasty app, powered by Walmart. Users of the Tasty app can add any ingredients from a recipe to their cart and pick it up at any nearby Walmart.
In early 2021 my team was approached by Walmart to create organic social content for Instagram and TikTok that educated our audience on the convenience and ease of the app for mealtimes. We partnered with social-first food creators like Jasmine Pak and Zaynab Issa to show how simple it was to use the Shoppable Recipes feature to get the groceries you needed to make a delicious meal.
Our slate of videos got over 4M organic views across social channels; the Strawberry Poke Cake video made that the top recipe in the Tasty app for the week.
Executive Producer: Rachel Zarrell
Producers: Marie Koury, Destiny Liley