YouTube, alongside its social media agency, XX Artists, set out to develop a creative, uniquely YouTube, approach for its owned Instagram Stories that would increase overall engagement with its global audience. The pillars for a successful new IG Stories program: organic, champion creators and their content, and engage viewers across all story frames, beginning to end.
Together, YouTube and XX Artists crafted an IG Story format rooted in trending topics, gamification of native tools, and the celebration of cross-genre and international creator content. The content format that emerged was titled This or That; an interactive IG Story series that asks audiences to choose their preferred activity, content, or trend within a series of Story frames that showcased cuts of YouTube creators’ content spanning a variety of topics.
XX Artists’ tactical implementation of this campaign included:
Curating a list of sub-topics based on trending YouTube themes and brand moments
Cutting clips to fit in a dual IG Story frame dimensions
Leveraging native IG Story tools to add on-screen text, animations, and voting features
Accompanying editorial sourcing to drive from feed to IG Stories with compatible, engaging content
Across the span of 2020, YouTube posted forty-seven This or That IG stories with creators engaging their audience executing six different topics: Summer, Hispanic Heritage Month, Ways to Learn, Spooky Season, Gaming, and Thanksgiving. This series included creators from eight countries: the United States, Japan, Mexico, Brazil, Germany, Korea, Canada, and the United Kingdom.
From hiking to indulging in ice cream to yoga with puppies to self-care to (at home) dance parties, This or That featured the most popular internet themes that brought audiences joy, solace, and comfort in 2020.
This or That has become one of YouTube’s best performing Instagram Story content series of all time. More detailed results can be found under confidential information.
