Each year, our roster of talented MTV Video Music Awards-nominated artists is more exciting than the last – and our announcement revealing those nominees to the world needs to follow suit in a BIG, innovative way! But what good is revealing exciting information in an exciting way if no one sees it? Getting the biggest reach and the most eyeballs possible on our announcement content was an important priority.
The goal was to reveal the VMA nominees in a new and exciting way, leverage a first-to-market opportunity, engage our young audience on one of their favorite platforms, and incorporate talent that our fans know and love.
When Instagram launched IGTV, its stand-alone long-form video app, just as we were strategizing how we'd like to reveal our nominees at the end of June, we knew it was kismet! Our fans already rabidly consume content on Instagram, and paired with a new feature to play with, IGTV proved to be the natural place to unveil our 2018 MTV VMA nominees, which would be the first time this was ever done for an awards show.
While MTV's social reach is already massive, we wanted to push our reach even further by partnering with a team of popular Instagrammers (including Nyle DiMarco, Tessa Brooks, Bretman Rock, Scotty Sire and Toddy Smith) to create original videos announcing our 2018 VMA categories and nominees. Videos kept a fun, light tone – for example, Bretman Rock smashed geodes with a hammer to reveal the Best Rock nominees.
In addition, the IGTV video was cut into short-form videos for each category and used across all platforms – online to MTV on-air – through the run of the campaign to promote voting, extend the conversation and increase engagement.
Our 2018 MTV VMA nominee reveal on IGTV set a precedent – it was the first time this was ever done for an awards show, and our fans loved it. Our IGTV videos drove 105K+ views on IGTV and an additional 190K+ views on Facebook Watch. Along with our short-form cutdowns, IGTV nominee reveal content drove over 3 million cross-platform views!
As well, #VMAs trended #3 worldwide on Twitter within an hour of announcement and trended globally for 6+ hours. Our roster of influencers had a combined following of over 22 million!
