THE 14TH ANNUAL SHORTY AWARDS

The Shorty Awards honor the best of social media and digital. View this season's finalists!

Special Project

Special Project
From the 13th Annual Shorty Awards

YouTube's This or That

Finalist in Instagram Stories

Objectives

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. 

Strategy and Execution

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:

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. 

Results

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. 

Media

Entrant Company / Organization Name

XX Artists, YouTube

Link