More than 1,000 Canadian women cooked with cheese last Sunday as they watched a cooking class streamed live on YouTube.
It was all part of an initiative for the Dairy Farmers of Canada organized by the women’s resource site ChickAdvisor. The idea for the class arose after ChickAdvisor received a brief from Dairy Farmers’ media agency M2 seeking an inventive and creative event.
“We’ve never done anything live with YouTube before,” says Ali de Bold, co-founder of ChickAdvisor.
De Bold hosted the June 7 event that starred chef Christine Cushing, host of the Oprah Winfrey Network reality show Fearless in the Kitchen, and included 20 in-studio participants in Toronto and 1,015 participants online.
“What we were doing was combining an in-person, real experience, but simultaneously making it available across the internet.”
Women cooked three courses using Canadian halloumi, smoked maple cheddar and mascarpone cheeses.
Participants came from ChickAdvisor’s 71,000-plus members who were invited online and through email blast to apply to become part of the event. “We were really looking for foodies,” says de Bold.
Women chosen to participate received kits with aprons, recipe cards and the ingredients they needed to buy in order to cook along.
“What really shocked us was the amount of sharing – it blew our expectations,” de Bold says.
She says women snapped photos of themselves buying supplies at the grocery store, wearing the pink-branded aprons and of their cooking creations on Instagram, Twitter and Facebook.
“We ended up being the number one trending (Twitter) hashtag in Canada on Sunday,” she says. “It was picture after picture of their turkey burgers and their salads and their desserts. It was a beautiful thing.”
During the event, participants were invited to ask Cushing questions and they’d be answered live. When Cushing responded, there would be posts like “Woo, Christine answered my question,” on the hashtag MasterCheeseClass.
“It was surreal having interaction with people in person and having people across the internet, across Canada asking questions and getting responses.”
An edited version of the two-hour event will be posted on YouTube.
De Bold says the June 7 event was considered a trial run. Cushing will host another cooking class live- streamed on YouTube on Nov. 8 that will be open to the public.
Multivitamin Media handled media relations for the event.
