Subscription news service theSkimm recently reached out to QVC for a customized video to feature in their newest section: “Press Pause”, and we teamed up with Celebrity Makeup Artist and founder of Mally Beauty Mally Roncal to make it happen.
theSkimm is a female-founded media company, offering millennials easily digestible digital news stories and videos via a newsletter, app, podcast, and website. The weekly “Press Pause” feature gives readers and viewers fashion inspiration, self-care tips, entertainment recommendations, and similar content.
For QVC, being featured on “Press Pause” is an opportunity to connect younger viewers with the wide range of entertaining video content across our social pages, streaming services, apps, and other digital platforms. For this sponsored placement, QVC’s content development team worked with Mally to create a specially tailored episode of “Mally Makes it Better,” a new digital series on the QVC Originals YouTube channel and the QVC and HSN streaming service.
“There’s nothing that I love more than connecting with our customer and sharing our love, tips and tricks, and positive energy,” said Mally. “It’s a very fragile time right now in our world. We go from feeling OK, to feeling stressed, to feeling afraid. Everyone needs a big (virtual) hug and someone to let them know that everything is going to be all right. I feel honored and blessed that QVC has given me this opportunity.”
“Mally Makes it Better” is shot entirely by Mally herself on her iPhone and edited by QVC’s content development team. In each 15-20-minute episode, Mally shares a makeup trick or skincare tutorial, a new recipe, and other inspiring ideas. As a self-proclaimed “positivity preacher,” Mally also answers questions from her followers during each episode. The series lives on our QVC Originals YouTube Channel, QVC’s Instagram TV (IGTV), QVC’s Facebook, and our QVC/HSN streaming service.
“Unique circumstances call for unique solutions,” said Mike Gleason, QVC’s Director of Content Development. “Once we realized we would be home for quite some time, we started looking for new ways to make new content for our digital platforms. With the world in need of some positivity, we couldn’t think of anyone better to help us create positive content than the magnificent Mally Roncal.”
“Press Pause” featured “Mally Makes it Better” in The Daily Skimm, in a custom section in a “Press Pause” weekly newsletter (which was also an article on its website), and on its social platforms. theSkimm’s audience was directed to the QVC Originals page on QVC.com, where they could watch the “Mally Makes it Better” episode and look through a product carousel with all products used by Mally in the video.
The sponsorship surpassed the guaranteed media impressions by 106% by tapping into theSkimm’s multiple platforms. Click-to-open rates were above industry standards, and native in-feed social posts on theSkimm’s platforms drove engagement rates well above benchmarks.