With a nearly 1.6 million follower total social universe at finale, Oxygen’s cross-platform social media campaign for “The Glee Project" truly captured the attention of our target audience of social media savvy young women with up-to-the-minute show and contender news, content, and the opportunity to engage with talent. The robust campaign included an official presence on Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Tumblr and GetGlue, as well as weekly contender chats on OxygenLive, Oxygen’s proprietary real-time water cooler platform, and Bing Fan Favorite, a cross-platform fan favorite polling destination. In crafting the campaign, Oxygen made full use of the unique features of each of these platforms. For The Glee Project premiere, Oxygen partnered with Facebook to develop the first fully personalized live streaming application on the Facebook platform. Fans were able to RSVP to a one-hour live streaming video event and could chat and interact with all 12 contenders via a tab on our Facebook page. Fans could personalize the event by installing the application on their own Facebook pages and inviting only their friends, while still being able to access to the live stream and interact with talent. Throughout the season, fans were able to vote for their favorite contenders in a Fan Favorite poll application on the Facebook page as part of a cross-platform Bing sponsorship that included Oxygen.com and mobile. Stakes were high: the winning contender received a $10,000 prize and fans were rewarded with a special performance by the winner, and 40% of traffic to the promotion came from downstream referrals from fans using the social features on the page to share the experience with their Facebook and Twitter networks (source: Meteor). On Twitter, fans could follow live tweets from special events, as well as weekly OxygenLive contender chats. In fact, live tweeting activity during the finale helped push all four finalists' names into the Worldwide trending topics list! Throughout the series, fans were engaged with fun conversation igniting hashtags (i.e. #LastChancePerformanceSongIdPick, #MyBiggestDream, #ReasonsToLoveTheGleeProject) and opportunities to earn re-tweets, or to be recognized in a Follow Friday tweet. YouTube was used to increase intent to view “The Glee Project" among “Glee" fans. To leverage the viral capacity of this platform, Oxygen debuted “Firework", the first music video from “The Glee Project", on YouTube immediately after its World Premiere on the linear channel. In the three weeks prior to premiere, the “Firework" video logged over 575K streams. Throughout the season, fans were able to access bonus content from the contenders and weekly music video previews on the “The Glee Project" YouTube channel, garnering 6.4 million video streams through finale. With an eye towards innovation, “The Glee Project" became the first reality television show to establish an official presence on Tumblr. Fans who checked-in via a GetGlue widget on a dedicated Oxygen.com landing page were able to earn weekly stickers featuring each of the 12 contenders and got access to a weekly series of exclusive videos. Results: “The Glee Project" social universe, which includes official accounts for the show and its 12 contenders, recorded an incredible 909% increase in followers from premiere to finale, fed by the buzz generated from fans discovering the show. Each episode of the series ranked in the top five most mentioned programs amongst all cable television programs on Sunday nights on Trendrr.tv, with the season finale coming in at the #1 most mentioned show amongst all Cable and Broadcast programs (ahead of such hit series as “True Blood" and “Keeping Up With The Kardashians"), and over 700K social mentions being recorded throughout the series. (source: Trendrr) And with over 96K check-ins by season's end, “The Glee Project" became the #8 most checked-in to network or cable television show on GetGlue this summer. (source: GetGlue, Top 10 Most Check-In TV Shows: Summer 2011) In addition to winning over the hearts -- and status updates -- of our audience, the show’s suite of social initiatives helped woo premiere brand sponsors including Microsoft Bing, Verizon, Listerine and Neutrogena, all of whom included social elements in their sponsorship packages. During the nine week campaign, the Bing Fan Favorite poll generated nearly 4M votes. Online, “The Glee Project" was Oxygen.com’s most successful competition reality show site to date with 2.1M unique visitors for the season. Likewise, “The Glee Project" social media campaign contributed to increased awareness and multi-platform viewership. Since its premiere on 6/12/11, the series has posted impressive triple-digit growth with +172% in total viewers and +167% among W18-49. Additionally, “The Glee Project" has reached almost 39 million viewers on multiple platforms, including on-air, Oxygen.com, Hulu.com and VOD. (source: Nielsen Media Research, Omniture, Hulu Partner Portal, Rentrak)
