After 14 seasons of Watch What Happens Live with Andy Cohen (WWHL), Bravo's live late night show, Bravo wanted to attract new viewers, engage fans, and position Andy Cohen as the 'Late Night King of Fun' all while driving social buzz. WWHL is the only late night show that airs live, and with live content on social exploding, Bravo saw an opportunity to reach new viewers right where they are: in social media. To show potential viewers the live, unfiltered nature of the show, Bravo launched 'Watch What Happens Next' (WWHN)— a week of live after shows on five different social platforms.
Andy says what he wants. He asks the questions we don't expect him to ask. And he does it in a fun way that makes viewers excited and guests feel comfortable.
The strategy was to leverage the power of social to amplify the access fans had to Andy and WWHL. The idea was to invite the masses into the clubhouse for a taste of what it's like to be a part of Andy's celebrity crew by hooking them up with what makes WWHL different and giving them plenty of experiences to rubberneck in social.
WWHN was a never-before-attempted week of live social programming. For five consecutive nights, Bravo brought the most unfiltered late night program to the most unfiltered audiences by broadcasting live after shows on Reddit, Snapchat, Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook, each with a special, platform-specific spin. Throughout each show, Andy asked fans questions from each of the platforms, integrating social conversation into the show.
Each day leveraged a different social platform to live stream on:
Sunday: The campaign kicked off with the first-ever Reddit AMA IRL with Andy, Kim Zolciak-Biermann, and Gabourey Sidibe. Fans had the opportunity to ask questions via a livestream directly on Reddit, and Andy chose AMA questions to answer live.
Monday: WWHN innovated with Snap Ads. Utilizing traffic-driving ad units, we drove Snapchat users directly to a livestream of Andy, Jim Parsons, and Diane Lane playing "Bravologues," a re-enactment of Bravo moments using Snapchat lenses.
Tuesday: Bravo leveraged Twitter Live to let fans watch a livestream of Andy, Christopher Meloni, and Patti Lupone performing dramatic readings of tweets from Twitter 'divas' alongside a stream of live conversation.
Wednesday: In true WWHL fashion, Andy threw an exclusive after party to celebrate WWHN. On this night, Bravo went live on Instagram with Andy, Carole Radziwill, and Anthony Atamanuik. Premium Instagram influencers @girlwithnojob and @betches asked Andy's guests the live, hard-hitting questions.
Thursday: Bravo partnered with Entertainment Tonight to go live with Amy Schumer and Goldie Hawn on Facebook. The two played 'Guestribution,' a game that put Andy in the hot seat.
Overall, the campaign was a huge success with 2.4MM+ Total Video Views, 50MM+ Total Impressions, and 742K+ Engagements. There were 17K new subscribers on the r/television sub-Reddit attributed to the AMA IRL, with +69.5% more questions than the average text-based Reddit AMA and a +340% higher watch time compared to the average for a 30-minute Twitter Live. Performance on social wasn't the only thing that saw a big lift. There was an +8% increase in ratings from the prior 4-week average and +13% from 2017-to-date average.
