AOL Canada is partnering with Sun Life Financial on a new web series called Two Minutes to Transform that resides on The Huffington Post Canada and within the AOL On hub.
The series is comprised of 24 two-minute episodes featuring Canadian personalities offering advice pertaining to key life matters such as finances, wellness, style and motivation.
It features successful Canadians from a variety of professions including astronaut Chris Hadfield, real estate investor (and TV personality) Scott McGillivray and Canadian Olympians Brianne Theisen-Eaton and Simon Whitfield.
Bill Ramsammy, assistant vice-president, corporate brand and marketing for Sun Life in Toronto, said Sun Life has been active in the content space for “quite some time” – citing the BrighterLife.ca blog that debuted in 2011 – but the AOL partnership enables it to present content in a more approachable manner.
“We know that consumers are taking in video more and more, so we just thought it was a great way to get information out there in digestible ways,” he said. “These videos are there to motivate consumers from a thought leadership, financial literacy and lifestyle perspective. It’s about transforming your life to have a better financial future and a better lifestyle in general.”
The program also ties in with Sun Life’s five-year-old “Money for Life” campaign, which advocates living what Ramsammy described as “a life less linear” – a message he said resonates with millennial and Gen Y audiences.
While Sun Life continues to utilize traditional mass media, it is increasingly incorporating digital and social activation in its marketing strategies. An ongoing sponsorship with the Toronto Raptors, meanwhile, is specifically designed to reach the younger ethnic market.
Two Minutes to Transform is one of seven original Canadian series featured in the AOL Originals slate of programming. The deal with Sun Life was brokered with Omnicom, one of three agency groups (the others were IPG and Dentsu Aegis) that purchased AOL Canada inventory during this year’s NewFronts in New York.
“It got a ton of advertiser interest right out of the gate,” said Brad Cressman, vice-president, head of business operations at AOL Canada. “Sun Life found that it aligned very well with what they were talking about with their own marketing messages to their customers and clients.”
The series is designed to be short and snack-able in order to appeal to millennial audiences, but goes beyond simple “tips and tricks” said Cressman. “It needed to be a bit more rooted in actual advice from people that have that expertise or live in the day-to-day realm of transformation,” he said.
Episodes are accompanied by a Sun Life sponsorship announcement, but AOL is also working with the company on co-created content developed with its branded content development arm, Partner Studios.
“It’s truly part of our Partner Studios mandate to be working with advertisers as they see fit,” said Cressman. “Sometimes advertisers have great content that fits right in, sometimes they want to be associated with the content we’re creating, and there are some that live in the middle.
“This is one of those [clients] that lives in the middle, and we’ll be working with them on content that resonates. It fits well with their messaging, and they felt they could work with us and add some value and create some cool content that way.”
Ramsammy said the content pieces were still in development, but that Sun Life is creating nine additional videos set to debut in 2016. Three of the videos will feature former NHL player Darrin Shannon – who scored 87 goals and 250 points in 506 career games with the Buffalo Sabres, Winnipeg Jets and Phoenix Coyotes – who became a Sun Life advisor when he retired from the league in 1999.
“It’s a very unique way of telling the story of what you do after retirement,” said Ramsammy. “It could be a second career or going back to school, but it’s breaking the typical stereotype of walking on a beach listening to reggae. We really think this is going to resonate with people.”
