Launched in May 2011, the MTV Tumblr provides microblogging engagement with the world’s premier youth entertainment brand and cultural home of the millennial generation, music fans and artists. In addition to sharing a constant flow of visual highlights surrounding the network’s different programs (from rallying buzz for new shows like “Catfish" to sharing new season trailers for returning shows like “World of Jenks"), it serves as a powerful, visual pop culture platform that pumps out exclusive real-time GIFs and memes around key moments from its legendary tentpole events (see Rihanna performing -- http://mtv.tumblr.com/post/31034121602#notes -- at the 2012 VMAs), as well as current happenings around the pop culturesphere that everyone’s sure to be buzzing about (and expecting to see in re-bloggable form, stat – like Beyonce’s killer Super Bowl performance -- http://mtv.tumblr.com/post/42244353215/best-super-bowl-ever#notes). MTV's Tumblr combines content creation, curation and community outreach into an artistically compelling and powerfully viral brand outpost, bringing Tumblr's celebration of the visual to bear on our unique level of access and connection to music, celebrity and TV. Few in the space have leveraged the platform in as many unique ways successfully. We have virally driven tune-in to our own programming (http://mtv.tumblr.com/post/26049426441/tonight-is-gonna-be-awkward-season-2-premieres-at#notes). We have organically brought in sponsors, as with our Red Carpet Animated GIF Booth (http://mtv.tumblr.com/tagged/revlon-gif-photobooth) during last year's MTV Movie Awards (the first of its kind). We are highly dedicated to elevating the artists that make the Tumblr community so unique — for the 2012 Video Music Awards, we sought out five up-and-coming animated GIF artists and commissioned original works to help promote the show in a project called VMA TumblrART (http://mtv.tumblr.com/tagged/VMA-tumblrART) — work which was then featured an on-air promotional spot (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g1j2szMz_WM). We have also featured exclusive work from Tumblr artists within our company, including the Mr.GIF (http://mtv.tumblr.com/tagged/mr-gif) collective, T. Kyle MacMahon (http://mtv.tumblr.com/tagged/grammys) of the Reality TV Gifs blog, and photographers (http://mtv.tumblr.com/tagged/colindouglasgray) in our creative department. MTV's Tumblr endeavors to playfully and creatively take a forward looking and community-centric approach to carrying on the brand's singular creative and artistic legacy.
