• by Erik Sass , Staff Writer @eriksass1, June 17, 2016

Father’s Day, the great “Also Ran” of national holidays, is upon us once again, giving dads everywhere an excuse to have three light beers on Sunday before wisely reining it in.

As always, this special occasion also serves as a reminder of the huge disparity between online media targeting moms and dads. Moms can choose from a whole universe of blogs and Web sites covering every aspect of motherhood.

They can even choose how much “Mommy Wars” controversy they want, ranging from passive-aggressive judgment to open shaming (OK, I made that last part up). There are also plenty of general parenting sites – but there aren’t nearly as many sites with content specifically for dads.

Fatherly, a Web site targeting young fathers, is filling this yawning chasm with all sorts of advice, tips and suggestions – and big brands, hoping to reach millennial men as they navigate this major life stage, are taking notice.

In one of the site’s newest (and biggest) brand partnerships, GMC is sponsoring a major branded content series revolving around the theme “940 Weekends” to promote the new Sierra Truck.

That’s the number of weekends dads have with their kids before they turn 18 and go away to college, Fatherly CEO Mike Rothman explained. “It’s based on the fact that men are spending more of their free time with their kids on the weekends, and when you quantify it like that, it makes you realize how precious that time is, and that you want to cherish every moment.”

On that note, with “940 Weekends,” Fatherly is presenting ideas for age-appropriate activities for dads to do with their kids on each weekend, teaching them skills in addition to having fun, with organic brand integrations for the GMC Sierra throughout.

The program was conceived and executed by Fatherly in partnership with NowThis and GMC’s media agency, Carat Detroit, and kicks off with three articles and four videos.

Examples of content in the “940 Weekends” series includes activities designed to appeal to tech-savvy dads, as well as kids, like a guide to “geocaching.” (That’s a massive mobile treasure hunt using GPS, for the uninitiated.) Other examples include posts titled, “A Pulitzer-Prize Winning Photographer On Teaching Your Kid To Take Great Photos, Capture The Moment, Tell Stories, and See The World In A New Way” and “A Top Astronomer On Stargazing With Your Kids.”

On the brand side, Rothman emphasized that the series is “editorially driven by Fatherly, and that’s in the brand’s best interest so it doesn’t feel like an ad. We really wanted to figure out how the idea of ‘940 Weekends’ would be conducive to talking about the vehicle and tastefully integrated as part of the concept.”

Here, Fatherly focuses on “finding activities out of the total 940 that lend themselves to product shots. For example, with stargazing, it’s sitting in the back of the truck and looking at the night sky. With geocaching, we look at some of the in-dash map functionality to get you as close as possible to your goal.”

Rothman also noted that most of the content is evergreen, meaning dads may be consulting it for years to come: “There’s always someone who’s hitting that weekend 200 for the first time. While someone is exiting from that milestone, someone is entering. Stargazing is never going to go out of fashion.”