The Block has driven both brand awareness and sales for fresh meal company youfoodz, CEO Lance Giles has said, with Nine helping the start-up connect with consumers through the power of TV.

“Nine and youfoodz have had a long, long relationship,” Giles said. “It started with Nine knocking on the door and speaking to us when we were a young company that didn’t have experience in TV.

“We had looked at TV and thought that’s a big, expensive market we will get to one day, but Nine said, ‘You’re an emerging brand and we can see what you’re doing and we want to be part of this journey, how can we make this happen?’”

“We provided our marketing budget and they found a strategy that fitted it. We knew where we wanted to go as a brand – building a relationship with our customers – and for that to happen we needed to be in touch with them through mainstream media, exposing them to our brand. Nine made that happen from the start.”

youfoodz has been a sponsor of The Block for two years, providing food for the contestants and creating the youfoodz challenge which has seen contestants creating their own youfoodz meal, with the winners meal being made into a real youfoodz item, available to consumers.

“The Block is definitely driving sales and is very successful for our business model,” Giles said.

“We’ve had a lot of emails where a customer is watching The Block, watching their favourite contestant, and all of sudden they’re saying “‘I’m eating that tonight’, or ‘That’s my favourite meal too’.”

Giles credits the power of the partnership with The Block to the organic nature of the content.

“When it’s organically been shown in the lifestyle of a contestant working extremely hard, doing those tireless hours to build something special, we’re the solution for them to be able to stay healthy.”