The MTV Video Music Awards are a pop cultural phenomenon where everything might happen!
Goals:
- Engage with the show and our fans in real time
- Increase year-over-year digital engagement and video views
- Create awareness around the VMAs - drive tune-in to the live broadcast
In our overall approach to VMA coverage, we strove to engage our fans across their native social landscape in the lead up, during, and following the broadcast while working closely with talent to create premium, exclusive content to promote the show.
In the lead up, we teased fans to get them excited, engaged and drive awareness to tune in:
- Partnered with top social influencers (Nyle DiMarco, Tessa Brooks, Bretman Rock, Scotty Sire, Toddy Smith) to unveil our 2018 nominees on IGTV
- Ignited fan engagement via a multi-platform approach to VMA voting, including MTV.com, Amazon Alexa and Twitter Chatbot
- Expanded voting with an Instagram Stories exclusive social category, Song Of Summer, where users tapped polls and swiped up to vote
- Jennifer Lopez stopped by for a special episode of TRL, streamed to Facebook Live, where we announced the legend as our Video Vanguard honoree
- Worked with J.Lo's team to produce high-performing social videos that explored her VMA history and promoted her Vanguard honor
- Captured exclusive portraits and backstage interviews with performing talent during rehearsals, and allowed talent to connect directly with their fans by taking over our brand social accounts
- Streamed a VMA-themed singalong with the Shiggy Show and the Backstreet Boys on Facebook Live
During the show we kept the momentum rolling and allowed our fans to engage with the VMAs in real time:
- Backstage Pass on Facebook Live took viewers on an all-access adventure backstage at the VMAs, where fans could affect the livestream via interactive polls and embedded cameras allowed fans to join their favorite celebs' entourages
- Our Red Carpet Show streamed in real time on Twitter with talent interviews, fashion commentary, and performances
- For an even closer look at the action, our Fashion Detail camera on YouTube Live caught the best dressed celebs on the red carpet
- We partnered with Snapchat to produce four Our Stories around the 2018 VMAs: Countdown, Red Carpet, In Show, and Photo Highlights
- During the red carpet, Best New Artist voting moved exclusively to Twitter for an all-out hashtag battle between the top two nominees during the live VMA broadcast (spoiler alert: #voteCardiB came out victorious!)
- Artistically-edited, mini music video-style red carpet portraits by J.N. Silva on Instagram
- In the house, Gunner Stahl captured stylized, behind the scenes photos of talent during the show for Instagram
- And of course, real-time, live coverage of the show across all social platforms!
After the show wrapped, our coverage continued as fans were eager to consume all the content we had to offer:
- The 2018 VMAs were the MOST STREAMED award show in MTV & Viacom History. At the time of the show, we had 141.6M streams (+46% YoY) and, to date, we're at a record breaking 285.5M streams (+70% YoY)
- #VMAs trended Worldwide for 10 hours the night of the show with 8 hours at #1. Plus, the VMAs had 11 additional Worldwide trending topics.
- #VMAs trended in the US for 12 hours night of the show with 8 hours at #1. Plus, the VMAs had 15 additional US trending topics. Madonna trended for 3 hours at #1.
- +46% total engagements YoY
- #1 Most Social Program on All of TV on 8/20/18 (per Nielsen Social Content Ratings)
- @VMAs Instagram account saw +25% growth in the week leading up to the show
- @VMAs Facebook page nearly doubled its followers in 2018, experiencing +70% growth and breaking 1.1M followers
- Our IGTV nominee reveal was the first time this was ever done for an awards show. Between the IGTV video and its short-form cutdowns, nominee reveal content drove over 3 million cross-platform views!
- Song Of Summer voting on Instagram Stories generated 3.2M impressions and 660k engagements
- Instagram videos produced for J Lo's accounts generated over 10 million views
- Backstage Pass garnered 1.9 Million total streams and 23K engagements through the broadcast
- We saw strong growth on our Red Carpet Show on Twitter: +20% Total Views YoY and +51% Unique Viewers YoY
- Twitter Bot engagement rate was +50% YoY with a 75% completion rate
- Our Twitter hashtag battle vote volume was +10.7% YoY
- Snapchat Our Story U.S. unique viewers increased +36.8% YoY
