The MTV EMA is the premiere award show for global music – engaging fans from around the world, across genres and cultures. A key component of that mission are the Best Regional Act awards, where fans from 29 different regions vote for their favorite local artist to be recognized on the world stage.
This year, the MTV EMA digital team amped up that mission. We partnered with Facebook to create a regional award show in the form of a Facebook Live pre-show entirely dedicated to local winners and connecting them with their fans.
Hosted by Johnny Orlando, a two-time Best Canadian Act regional winner himself, this Facebook Live award show put a deserving spotlight on these amazing regional winning artists.
The show succeeded as a celebration of global music as a result of Johnny & the participation of all of the winners. From reggaeton, afrobeat, k-pop to hip-hop, the show exemplified not only geographic and cultural diversity, but diversity in popular music itself.
With an impressive level of access, nearly all of the local winners were able to appear on the show (virtually, in 2020 fashion) to personally speak to the fans watching, commenting & liking – both in English and in their native languages!
Throughout the campaign, we tapped into our massive global Facebook audience across our regions with highlights, artist and performance content. In addition, we hosted an exclusive Facebook live event to reveal the MTV EMA Best Local Act winners leading into the main linear show.
Our strategy and implementation needed to be multi-tiered. This ensured the Best Local Act show met our goals of celebrating global music, highlighting local artists, and engaging fans across regions, cultures and languages.
- We chose a charismatic host with an engaged fanbase who is himself a two-time Best Canadian Act winner. Johnny used his own experience to introduce these artists and celebrate their creativity and success.
- We were also able to leverage Johnny’s home studio, which enabled us to maintain production value even when filming remotely and keeping cast & crew safe during the Covid-19 pandemic.
- Our talent team worked tirelessly to collect acceptance speeches from 27 artists around the globe. Their extraordinary access and logistical savvy, allowed artists from around the world to film their speeches, in many cases in several languages.
- Our production team turned around acceptance videos at lightning speed.
- The speeches were delivered individually to artists to post on their socials as well – ensuring that all their fans received the gratitude they deserved for voting them Best Local Artist!
- We introduced global artists to fans across the world who they might not otherwise have been exposed to. We researched and wrote engaging intros for each artist, often using their music videos and other audio and visuals tailored to the winner. The audience got a true taste of their musical style and the show was definitely not a litany of acceptance speeches!
- By making it an event using Facebook Live leading into the main show, we were able to amp up excitement for the 2020 MTV EMAs, while offering our audience and our artists more than traditional promotional material.
- Lastly, we were able to serve our global audience by translating the show into 11 different languages and cross-posting to 27 regional Facebook pages. This made sure that no matter where our audience was located or what language they spoke, they could celebrate global music with us!
- The Best Local Act Facebook Live was a huge success, garnering more than 1 million views across the MTV EMA and regional Facebook pages. Perhaps even more importantly, fans left more than 51,000 engagements, including 16,000+ comments – signifying a highly engaged audience excited to cheer on their favorite artists, while discovering new ones, too.
- It proved to be truly global, with the majority of the audience tuning in from Central America and Southeast Asia, not to mention large audiences from Europe & North America.
- Total Facebook views were up year-over-year by 64%.
- Interactions were up 85%.
- The Best Local Act Award Show raised the bar in how the MTV EMA celebrate their local act winners. Given its success, it will serve as a template for future shows.
