Content Innovation Awards 2019: Development dynamo – Izabela Ianelli

Endemol Shine Brazil’s digital strategy manager Izabela Ianelli has worked in TV since 2010 and is winner of the Rising Star Of Development at this year’s Content Innovation Awards. Her work on MasterChef Brazil has changed how YouTube users search for cooking content in the country

What do you enjoy most about working in development?

The possibility to turn great ideas into remarkable results and robust projects, changing the content perspective and creating new business models and content ecosystems, where the ideas turn into profitable business for platforms and ancillary products.

Tell us about some shows you have worked on that you are proudest of.

Our team put a great deal of effort into mapping how MasterChef Brazil’s audience consumes online content and delivering a native content environment for the brand on YouTube, Facebook, Instagram and Twitter. This boosted profits from zero to almost the same budget that we got from the broadcaster that bought the show. I also need to highlight Cabelo Pantene, O Reality, an Endemol Shine Brasil format and the first branded content for Endemol Shine Group that travelled. I was part of the team who developed and managed the digital strategy for the first season, working closely with a marketing agency to develop content that brought brand values to the top while promoting the best user experience.

What single change would make the development process easier?

If digital producers could work alongside TV producers or agencies from the beginning of the development process, the storytelling that prolongs the lifetime of the show on digital platforms will be more attractive and stronger for the audience, as well as the brand.

The Brazilian market seems welcoming of new ideas, how do you find working in this territory?

It’s amazing to work in a country known worldwide for its creativity and its new business models, for example such as we do with digital and brand-funded projects. The global market needs to see more of the amazing projects and cases that are being created in Brazil. A good idea can be created no matter the territory.

What opportunities does the shift to digital bring programme makers?

With digital, we can talk with a new audience in a whole new way. That’s what we do on MasterChef Brazil. We have the brand on television, but if you are on a bus you can also be impacted by it on YouTube, Facebook, Instagram or Twitter. Our IP is everywhere as native content. We have memes, reaction content, tips and we don’t cannibalize audiences, we create a new public face for the brand.

Tell us about some of changes you made to the MasterChef brand in Brazil that has helped the show grow.

Our team has been building the digital strategy for MasterChef Brazil since 2015. In the beginning, content was being displayed by fans of the show unofficially on all social media and it was securing millions of views and likes. We realised the importance of securing a new business model in partnership with the broadcasters (Band TV and Discovery Home&Health) and building an ecosystem on digital platforms. In 2016, the YouTube channel launched a few hours after the show was aired on TV.

After boosting the number of followers on social media using a strategy to promote the TV show, we developed an original and exclusive format for YouTube called MasterChef Tips. We also launched a Best Moments Of MasterChef in Three Minutes show, and developed a full weekly agenda for the YouTube channel with native content such as Q&A’s, lists and reaction pieces.

What is the single biggest way in which audience viewing habits are changing?

People use mobile and internet for everything. Brazil is the fourth biggest consumer of the internet in the world, there are more mobiles than habitants here. The global market – not just Brazil – must understand that content needs to be everywhere in a native context.

TBI’s Content Innovation Awards took place on Sunday, 13 October at The Majestic Hotel, Cannes