ConAgra Serves Up ‘Life Unjarred’

ConAgra Foods Canada has partnered with Fresh Baked Entertainment to produce a new comedy web series Life Unjarred. The series follows everyday stay-at-home dad, Randy Mathews, his French Canadian wife Natalie, and son Jack as they stumble into the world of unexpected celebrity.

The story centers around Randy Matthews, the series’ relatable protagonist, who is recruited as a spokesperson for ConAgra brand VH Sauces after his son uploads a comedic video to YouTube showing him trying to cook with the sauces. The series debuted September 10 on the Life Unjarred YouTube page, and the custom site features recipe videos (screen tests of a bumbling Randy trying to demonstrate various recipes), blog entries from Randy, and typical social media fare. The storyline will adjust according to consumer response—the target audience are moms with kids under 17 and women of adult only households.

Life Unjarred marks a major change for VH Sauces’ traditional, television-based marketing approach. Tony Angelucci, Senior Brand Manager, Meal Enhancers at ConAgra, told Marketer News “We found [traditional media] wasn’t breaking through. We found that we really needed to engage with the consumer digitally more than in the past.” Although humor is a big departure from VH Sauces’ marketing strategy, it is not for parent company ConAgra, who teamed up with Yahoo! to present What’s So Funny? with Shira Lazar.

Life Unjarred will also be distributed through Canada-based Rogers Media through its on-demand cable platform and through RogersOnDemand.com. Rogers recently announced a partnership with Sony’s Crackle as the studio’s exclusive agent in Canada.