Objective: For this year's MTV Video Music Awards the goal was to find new and innovative ways to engage with fans across all screens pre-, during, and post-show, and to let them experience moments from the VMAs in real-time and beyond across multiple platforms.
Strategy: Identify new ways to announce award nominees, engage fans with social voting, leverage social influencers, and more. MTV was the first-ever to announce an award nominee via Snapchat, and first to recognize the Lyric Video as an art-form in the socially voted category where fans submitted their votes via hashtags. Another first, the MTV Artist App was the go-to mobile destination for exclusive VMA content, focusing on mobile more than ever before. A total of eight social influencers were on the ground at the VMAs, co-creating content and activating fans.
Outcome: The 2014 VMAs was announced the most social event of the summer across all television with over 12.6 million tweets, 259 trending topics, and nearly 63 million social interactions during the night of the show across Vine, Tumblr, Snapchat, Instagram, Twitter and Facebook. The VMA All Access livestream delivered 6.5 million streams, clocking in as the second most watched MTV digital livestream of all time, behind the 2013 VMA All Access livestream. MTV Editorial had nearly 3 million visitors and 4 million page views. Lastly, the MTV App saw its largest day of visitors and installs to date.
The objective for this year's MTV Video Music Awards was to stay on trend with today's culture by finding new and innovative ways to engage with fans across all screens pre, during and after the show to let them experience moments from the VMA's in real-time and beyond across multiple platforms. Every year MTV re-invents the VMA's to be as socially interactive and engaging as possible, and this year the combination of multiscreen initiatives came together to generate fantastic results.
To get fans engaged early on, MTV announced award nominees via Snapchat before they were revealed anywhere else. In doing this, the announcement reached a larger audience in an exciting new way. The nominations appeared in eight 10-second Snapchat videos that featured Austin Mahone, Fifth Harmony, Becky G and more in order to leverage their enormous fan bases. The videos were designed to fit the usual Snapchat format – front-facing camera selfie-style. Many of the snaps were screen-shot by fans and shared on personal Twitter and Facebook accounts, extending the reach of the announcement even more.
MTV became the first to recognize the Lyric Video as an art form in the socially voted category "Best Lyric Video." The category gave a nod to the evolution of Lyric Videos as a new stylized layer to bridge a song's release with the premiere of the music video. To give fans something new to vote for, the winner was determined by fans socially who voted via hashtags on Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, and Vine. Hashtags such as #votekatyperry, #votedemilovato, #votearianagrande, and more flooded social channels for this new category.
Another way MTV engaged fans for the VMAs was through influencer activations. The 2014 VMA's had the highest level of social influencer involvement ever in VMA history with a total of eight social influencers including JennXPenn, King Bach, Rebecca Black and more. All influencers were on the ground at the VMAs co-creating content around the venue and activating their fans across all of their social channels. Fans at home could also catch the influencers in audience shots and around the venue via All Access Live.
The MTV Artist App was the go-to mobile destination for exclusive VMA content, driving fans toward mobile viewing and sharing. The MTV Artist App featured behind-the-scenes bits pre-show and exclusive VMA performance content throughout the night and post-show that you could not get anywhere else. The multiscreen VMA experience was more focused on mobile this year than any year before including VMA All Access Live, specifically redesigned for mobile participation so fans could get the ultimate second screen experience in their hand while watching the show. Fans were able to capture their favorite VMA moments in highly shareable GIFs in real-time via All Access Live across platforms, while performances were available almost immediately for fans to share socially.
The outcome of the combined multiscreen activations resulted in the VMAs being the most social event of the summer across all television, according to Nielsen Social data. In only 24 hours after posting the full show online, the on-demand version drew in over 7 million streams. The 2014 VMA's had 12.6 million tweets and garnered 259 trending topics across Vine, Tumblr, Snapchat, Instagram, Twitter and Facebook. MTV saw nearly 63 million social interactions during the night of the show, and MTV Editorial had its best day with nearly 3 million visitors and 4 million page views. The VMA All Access Live Stream delivered 6.5 million streams clocking in as the second most watched MTV digital live stream of all time. On the mobile front, the MTV App saw its largest day of visitors and installs to date.
Staying at the forefront of social trends is no simple task, and the 2014 MTV Video Music Awards proved to be an enormous success in social engagement and activation, going above and beyond the usual and expected. MTV developed their most ambitious multiscreen approach to date for the VMA's, finding innovative and creative ways to engage before, during, and after the show.
