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In the year and a half since Niara Simon-Hollis joined independent lifestyle media company Tastemade in 2023 as senior marketing director, the brand’s streaming viewership has grown more than 40% globally. 

Tastemade programs such series as Street Somm, hosted by Jermaine Stone, All Up in My Grill starring Dale Talde, Worth the Hype and Struggle Meals with Frankie Celenza and Andrew Zimmern’s Wild Game Kitchen. Tastemade’s content can be found online, on the Tastemade app, on YouTube and across various connected TV (CTV) and free advertising-supported television (FAST) platforms. To get people more familiar with both the brand and its programs, Simon-Hollis and her team created the "Where Taste is Made" brand campaign .

Simon-Hollis was just promoted to Tastemade’s head of marketing, and she's now rolling out Tastemade's new cooking app, which was announced Monday, November 18. She's also working to continue to grow Tastemade across platforms and driving membership to its premium streaming offering, Tastemade+. 

Simon-Hollis joined Spotlight by G.E.M.A. by email to chat about all things Tastemade.

‍Spotlight: From reading your bio, it looks like you have been in marketing for a while, but the subject matter that you are marketing – sports, podcasts, and now food and lifestyle – keeps changing. What things that you learned in your previous roles at Fox, Amazon Music and Wondery apply to Tastemade and what is totally different? 

‍Niara Simon-Hollis: What I took away from my time at Fox was the importance of brand storytelling and the nuance of communicating with and to passionate fanbases. I learned so much under Robert Gottlieb’s leadership, and from award-winning creative directors like Steve Lewis and Rod Chiabai. When you’re speaking to audiences who are huge fans of brands, sports leagues, teams and athletes, they notice the tiniest details. The details are vital to elevating campaign creative. The senior marketing executives I worked with on the Fox Sports team were exceptional at brand storytelling as well as quarterbacking marketing campaigns that every single person across the business could get behind.

In regards to Amazon, I’m still always mindful of their leadership principles, one of which is to “insist on the highest standards.” It’s similar to what we were doing at Fox Sports as well, and it’s why I push anyone I’m working with to strive for excellence and to pay attention to even the smallest details. At Wondery, we excelled at platform marketing and relationships. I was able to secure premium editorial features on platforms like Apple Podcasts, which at the time, were critical to the success of our shows. I leverage that experience everyday at Tastemade, where partnerships and platform marketing are crucial to our success in FAST (free ad-supported streaming television).

‍Spotlight: Perhaps the content of Tastemade is not the biggest difference from Fox and Amazon, but instead it’s the way in which Tastemade’s content is distributed. Do you feel like part of your job is educating potential audiences on where and how they can find Tastemade content? If so, how do you accomplish this in a fun, yet effective way? 

‍Simon-Hollis: Absolutely! FAST is still new territory for a lot of brands, networks, and platforms. Most consumers don’t even know what FAST is, and if they’re using FAST, they’re probably not calling it that. Most smart TVs come with built-in, free TV streaming apps, but most consumers don’t realize that there’s high-quality programming – like that on Tastemade – that can be streamed from those places for free. This is why we created our “Where Taste is Made” brand campaign. We wanted people to know that while they might be familiar with our brand on social, we’re now available wherever they stream TV for free (and in some paid places too!).

In support of this, we’ve also leaned into using our show hosts/talent to educate their own fans and followers through concentrated efforts on social. We’ve created “How to Watch Tastemade” tutorials that release whenever we launch new shows. 

I’m excited to partner with our social team to come up with some new, fun ways to educate on social, and we’re planning the second iteration of our “Where Taste is Made” campaign for 2025. I also believe that as an industry we need to come together to solve this challenge, collectively educating viewers about what FAST is, where you can find it, and how to tune in.

‍Spotlight: What would you say Tastemade’s brand promise is? What brings viewers to Tastemade and keeps them there when there’s quite a bit of other food and lifestyle programming (Magnolia & Food Network, for example) with which they can spend time? 

‍Simon-Hollis: We’re offering lifestyle content with a fresh perspective, and oftentimes through a multicultural lens that other brands just aren’t prioritizing. The other legacy networks that you mentioned are aspirational, and I believe that many viewers tune in strictly for entertainment purposes. In reality, if viewers tried to execute some of the things that hosts of their shows are doing and creating, they would likely be challenged with resources and/or costs. At Tastemade, we really take a “you can do it too” approach to our content. It’s more accessible, and it’s inspirational. You might only need a few ingredients outside of what’s already in your spice cabinet or fridge. Regardless, you’re going to walk away from a show having learned something new and feeling confident to execute or explore it for yourself – we call it “turning viewers into doers.” With your good taste, you’ll impress your friends, and family, and ultimately, will  be blown away by the results.

‍Spotlight: Where do you tend to market to draw in potential Tastemade viewers? (Facebook ads, for example, or YouTube content). Most of what Tastemade has on YouTube now requires people to pay after a seven-day free trial. Do you feel like that’s a more effective strategy than offering some free content and some paid content? 

‍Simon-Hollis: In my previous role at Tastemade, we spent most of our media dollars on platform marketing buys and in places where we can directly measure performance. We also invest a lot of time in pitching our shows and programming stunts to platforms in order to secure editorial features. 

In my new role, I’m excited to also focus on growing Tastemade+ – an all-access membership to Tastemade’s recipe library and award-winning shows and documentaries (ad-free and on-demand) – with a focus on the new Tastemade Cooking app. For quite some time, the number-one request from our members has been to make this content available in a native cooking app versus only on the web, so we’re excited to deliver on what they crave most and to add even more value to our membership plan.

If consumers prefer not to come out of pocket for our content, they can still access many of our shows through free streaming TV apps.

‍Spotlight: Tastemade’s streaming viewership has grown more than 40% globally this year. To what do you attribute that? 

‍Simon-Hollis: I would attribute this growth to two key areas:

Our marketing investment, which includes paid media on platforms, partner marketing efforts with the editorial teams at those platforms, and brand marketing and storytelling that we’re doing to elevate our viewership and channel experience.

Additionally, our programming team has done an incredible job of programming both original and acquired content that’s driving a lot of interest in and eyeballs to our streaming channels. There are beloved, iconic personalities like Andrew Zimmern and Jamie Oliver, whose shows have joined our collection of originals from newcomers like Alex Hill of Spice Spice Baby, Jermaine Stone of Street Somm, and Tastemade fan favorites like Frankie Celenza of Struggle Meals and Dale Talde of All Up in My Grill.

‍Spotlight: You have overseen multicultural marketing campaigns for Tastemade and in your bio, you say that you have a passion for reaching multicultural audiences. How would you say you need to think differently in order to reach diverse audiences? What are some of the most effective ways you have found to reach them? 

‍Simon-Hollis: I believe that it’s important for marketing teams to understand that multicultural audiences are going to exist outside of the places that they might find everyday (non-multicultural) audiences, and outside of the spaces that they themselves may occupy. If you’re leading a marketing team and you’re not sure where to find new audiences, but you know you need to connect with them, then it’s your responsibility to employ people who are familiar with and/or directly represent the  audiences that you’re trying to reach. If headcount isn’t an option, then enlist the help of agencies who are tapped in and have the tools and resources to meet your goals. But the most important thing here is trust. If you are pitched an idea, it might not make sense to you because you’re not the target audience – and that’s okay! Be comfortable with not being the target demographic, and trusting the teams that you’ve hired to connect with those audiences authentically. 

Another real opportunity here is creator marketing. There are a lot of “IYKYK” trends and content on social media right now that are really resonating with multicultural audiences. Brands should leverage creators (who are excited to collaborate) to reach those audiences. The social chatter garnered from engaging these creators in fun and unexpected ways to promote your brand is priceless! In my new role, I’m excited to lean more deeply into influencer marketing in order for us to reach new audiences in innovative, new ways.

‍Spotlight: Tastemade’s streaming channels are distributed across various aggregated streaming platforms, such as Freevee, Fubo, YouTubeTV, and many more. Do you work on the affiliate marketing side of this as well? If so, how do you and your team work with these platforms to help get Tastemade in front of audiences? 

‍Simon-Hollis: Yes! I believe that the relationships that we have with our platform partners are crucial to our success. We are consistent in our communications with them, reaching out whenever we have new and exciting content that we want to promote. We’re constantly pitching. True partnerships should be mutually beneficial, so we’re always responsive and flexible to their requests for content and assets.

‍Spotlight: How does Tastemade integrate brands with its content? Do you ever work with brands on integrated marketing campaigns to run across Tastemade’s platforms?

‍Simon-Hollis: Tastemade integrates brands into our content in a variety of ways, ranging from sponsored content to integrations within our shows, as well as creating entirely bespoke campaigns. Flexibility like this allows us to deliver meaningful brand connections through content that resonates with our audience, while delivering on our partners’ goals. 

One of our most popular offerings is streaming-led stunt weeks, which have become a popular solution for brands aiming to align with tentpole moments. These stunts are like “Shark Week,” but for food lovers. They’re week-long programming events that feature themed episodes and specials. We further amplify these stunts across social, newsletters, and robust marketing campaigns and PR efforts, in order to deliver  a full, omnichannel experience.

An example of this is the campaign we built last summer for Kraft Heinz around our “Grill Week” stunt:

• Marquee Sponsorship: Kraft Heinz sponsored “Grill Week” to promote their line of Creamy Sauces, a grilling essential.
• On-Air Elements: The campaign featured custom grilling interstitials with Dale Talde, the host of All Up In My Grill, premiering during “Grill Week.”
• Interactive Shopping Experience: Kraft sponsored a digital “Grill Week” shop, powered by Shopsense AI, enabling viewers to shop directly from their mobile devices via QR codes.
• Social Amplification: Grilling recipe videos and static assets were distributed across Pinterest and Instagram, where audiences actively seek grilling inspiration.

Campaigns like this allow brands to connect with consumers at multiple touchpoints. Our  proposition is also very valuable, in that it simplifies the process of brands building comprehensive omni-channel campaigns that deliver results by using Tastemade as a single partner. 

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