AUSTIN — With stops in Austin, Dallas/Fort Worth, Houston and San Antonio, season one of the Checkoff-funded “BBQuest” documents the best of Texas barbecue with a side of sightseeing. But the exclusively online documentary hosted by Kelsey Pribilski does more than showcase road trip itineraries. It gets beef in front of Millenials in a way few promotions can.
“BBQuest” premiered on YouTube in August and already has 109,563,170 impressions and 1,141,230 views. But Rachel Chou, Texas Beef Council’s senior manager of consumer communications, says what they are most proud of is the time spent watching the episodes. Since the first week of September, 6.25 years’ worth of minutes of the series have been watched.
“Those numbers are incredible in my opinion,” says, Chou. “That’s an impressive number, but especially when you consider the short time span covered.”
The show’s success has carried on beyond video, though. The accompanying “BBQuest” recipe page has received almost 80,000 visits and has earned coverage in multiple major news outlets and the top barbecue-related blogs.
Chou says YouTube was the right choice for the series for a variety of reasons.
“YouTube is becoming one of the most popular websites or tools to view video online,” she says. “Whether it’s short form or long form content, people are going to YouTube for almost everything, and it’s also behaving like a search engine much like Google.”
Soon, though YouTube won’t be the only place to catch the series. Hulu has picked it up beginning in 2019.
“It’ll be running the full calendar year of 2019 on Hulu. People can watch it on demand any time on that platform. We’re really excited about that because most of our target audience has cut the cord and they are now streaming on platforms like Hulu,” Chou says.
Season two is already in being planned, and Chou looks forward to finding new ways to use the show to grow beef demand.
“We want to continually innovate, to reach out to consumers to connect with them, and to show them how beef fits into their life,” Chou says. “Whether they’re exploring Texas food culture, whether they’re traveling, whether they’re making memories with their families — beef is an integral part of their lives, and something that makes it better. We think that we’re doing that with ‘BBQuest.’”
To learn more about your beef checkoff programs, visit TexasBeefCheckoff.com or call 1-800-846-4113.
–Texas Beef Council
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