Inside the ‘Hot Ones’ product partnerships strategy

The YouTube chicken wing-eating show “Hot Ones” isn’t just popular with viewers—outside brands are increasingly hungry to get in front of its audience, which includes 14 million subscribers. But when it comes to collaborations, “Hot Ones” is choosy, especially when putting its name on products. “We turn down about 50 pitches for every one that gets made,” said Brendan Kelly, senior VP of brand partnerships at “Hot Ones” parent company First We Feast. In a recent interview, he detailed what the show looks for when striking product collabs related to the 10-year-old show, which is hosted by Sean Evans and features celebrities eating progressively hotter chicken wings while answering questions about their life and work. Evans is among a group of investors that bought First We Feast late last year from BuzzFeed for $82.5 million. “People want to experience what celebrities experience,” Kelly said. “Collaborations are a way to eat the show.” “Hot Ones” has done only six product partnerships in its history, four of those in the last two years, including with Firehouse Subs, Ragu, Pringles and Panda Express. Kelly credits the demand for product collabs to the show’s growing cultural recognition and the fact that it draws casual viewers who watch clips of the interviews on social media, giving the show even wider reach. The show also appeals to more than just a Gen Z audience. “There is an assumption that our audience is young or tied to who the guest is,” Kelly said. While there is a core audience, he points to the wide range of guests on the show who bring in their fandoms. “Hot Ones” does not have a set playbook for its partnerships but does have some best practices, according to Kelly. The show’s priority is to back products its viewers will like. It also favors partners that have scale, so the millions of “Hot Ones” viewers will get a chance to try the product. “It’s a vibe check too,” Kelly said. “We have to like working with the brand folks because we’ll be working together for like a year since the food space can have a long lead time.” The show worked with Panda Express in 2023 for a limited-time spicy blazing bourbon chicken that was tested in certain markets. It did so well that the chain brought back the item nationwide last September. “The response was undeniable—our guests loved it,” Jimmy Wang, executive director of product innovation at Panda Express, wrote in an email. “Our typical [limited-time offers] span over the course of a few months, but through our combined efforts, we actually sold out of the product almost two months earlier than our targeted depletion date!” View this post on Instagram A post shared by First We Feast (@firstwefeast) In 2022 Pringles and “Hot Ones” teamed up to make limited-edition chips based on hot sauces from the show—classic hot sauce, los calientes rojo and los calientes verde. Comedian Gabriel Iglesias reviewed them on the show. Pringles brought back the chips late last year with a new barbacoa flavor. “The strong fandom they’ve built in internet culture with the ‘Hot Ones’ show was an exciting audience for Pringles to break into with this collaboration,” Mauricio Jenkins, U.S. head of marketing for Pringles, wrote in an email. He did not disclose financial terms or sales figures, citing the corporate policy of Pringles owner Kellanova. Also read: Top 5 food and beverage marketing ideas to know about Earlier this year, the show partnered with Ragu on a line of three increasingly spicy pasta sauces. To get the word out, “Hot Ones” helped Ragu work with rapper Lil Yachty, a fan-favorite past guest, on a special episode where he and Evans tried the new sauces with mozzarella sticks between wings. View this post on Instagram A post shared by Bill (@ogcameraguybill) “Lil Yachty had full transparency into the branded nature of the episode before signing on to participate,” Kelly said. Not every product collaboration appears in a show. Even when they do, brands are not allowed to choose their guest. If there is a specific person a brand wants to work with, they have to pay for custom content. Firehouse Subs worked with “Hot Ones” for two limited-time sandwiches, the zesty garlic hook and ladder with “Hot Ones” garlic fresno hot sauce and the spicy dill hook and ladder served with a dill pickle marinated in “Hot Ones” super spicy Last Dab Reaper Edition hot sauce. The partnership, which debuted in March, seemed like a “seamless fit,” said Firehouse Subs Chief Marketing Officer Dena vonWerssowetz, especially since the sandwich chain already has a hot sauce bar where customers can add hot sauces to their sandwich free of charge. View this post on Instagram A post shared by Firehouse Subs (@firehousesubs) “A few weeks into the partnership, we’ve already received some really positive guest feedback on social media and through guest surveys,” vonWerssowetz wrote in an email. When asked if the chain had to pay licensing fees to use “Hot Ones” sauces, vonWerssowetz wrote, “Our partnership involved a mutual investment in media across both brands.” The chain also sponsored a couple of episodes of the show. Other product partnerships have included a hot pepper vodka with New Amsterdam Vodka and Hot Ones Hot Pockets. View this post on Instagram A post shared by First We Feast (@firstwefeast) Kelly said the show has never halted a partnership. He credits that to being transparent, including with the logistics of working with “Hot Ones” sauces. “We are very up-front at the start,” Kelly said. “These are the costs of working with our sauces, and if it’s going to taste like the sauce on the show, it has to be ours.” Other advertising opportunities There are other ways for brands to get in front of the show’s fans. Early partnerships were small branded merchandise drops, including a sweatshirt with Champion and shoes with Reebok. The show also did a small licensing deal in 2022 for a limited-time spicy burger sauce for Shake Shack and another in 2023 with Grubhub to deliver spicy wings to fans in New York City. The most common way for brands to get involved is to sponsor a show with the brand’s logo appearing before Evans starts the interview. The sponsorship ad stays in front of that show permanently, Kelly said. Since brands cannot pick which guest their ad will air with, Kelly says the team gets questions about brand safety. For example, the show allows swearing. “My biggest advice is to watch the show and get a feel for it,” Kelly said of interested brands. Progressive, for example, bought a pre-run slot that looked like a smaller version of the show and aired in October. It starred ad character Dr. Rick. Sade Balogun, senior business leader, brand experience at Progressive, previously told Ad Age that the insurer wanted to connect with “Hot Ones” millennial and Gen Z viewers. “It was a new and unique way for Progressive to engage with different audiences and fit nicely into our strategy of investing in more consumer and culturally oriented advertising,” Balogun wrote via email in response to how the partnership performed. “This effort drove brand lift in select channels and beat our benchmarks on digital engagement and social sentiment.”

Inside the ‘Hot Ones’ product partnerships strategy

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