We know that our target audience—young music lovers around the world—are rapidly evolving and multiplying the ways they consume content. So we knew our digital/social integration with the live TV event had to be more multifaceted than ever before, grabbing fans' attention and sparking conversation across the wide array of platforms where they could experience the EMAs. We aimed to get our audience buzzing about the event and give them an insider's view of all the EMA excitement from every angle, including getting up close to their favorite artists. And we wanted to give our sponsors a presence in the campaign, in a way that was creative and fun for fans.
Digital and social integration with the 2015 MTV EMA live broadcast spanned a wide range of platforms. A-list celebs, social influencers, and fans around the world all shared in being a part of the EMA experience.
-Mtvema.com (encompassing 34 regional sites localized into 18 languages) and the MTV EMA app live-streamed the main show, red carpet show, and 6 behind-the-scenes webcams, so fans could experience the event from many angles beyond what the TV cameras showed.
-During on-air commercial breaks, MTV UK VJ Laura Whitmore hosted a live digital-exclusive backstage show featuring interviews with artists like Justin Bieber and Macklemore. Boosting real-time fan engagement with the live event, Laura rallied fans to tweet their best 'guitar god' poses using #EMAguitargod, and featured some of the best photos in a later segment.
-Plus, we were the first global award show ever to live-stream in virtual reality, with the MTV EMA app offering a VR stream of the red carpet and show stage, so viewers at home got an immersive view of performances by artists like Pharrell Williams and Fifth Harmony as if they were right there at the venue, again capturing a perspective beyond what they saw on TV.
But we didn't limit the experience to our owned platforms. The EMA event had strong presence on a multitude of social platforms, truly meeting our audience where they are in real time:
-We partnered with Snapchat for a Live Story, which offered red carpet, backstage, and main show coverage complementing the TV broadcast.
-We also partnered with Instagram to promote their just-launched Boomerang app, via a backstage photo booth where talent could pose for fun GIF-like looping videos, offering fans yet another glimpse behind the scenes.
-As artists came offstage during the show, the MTV EMA Periscope account streamed 60-second interviews with them, reaching over 30,000 live viewers.
-To increase engagement and encourage social conversation, we live-tweeted updates and commentary on the show, posted exclusive red carpet and behind-the-scenes photos on Instagram, and posted near real-time Vine and Facebook videos of the night's most buzzed-about moments.
-Social influencers from around the world, like Hugo Gloss and King Bach, were on the scene sharing their EMA experience with their followers. And after the show, fans and celebs alike continued to buzz on social media about the epic event they had just watched, extending the EMA's impact on social conversation well past the duration of the live on-air broadcast.
The multifaceted integration of digital and social content with the 2015 MTV EMA live TV broadcast made a massive impact on social media conversation. Fans' excitement about the EMA was palpable, with a #1 worldwide trending Twitter topic and several EMA-related worldwide trending topics on the night of the show. #MTVEMA was one of Twitter's top 10 trending topics in music in 2015. And we delivered our audience innovative and immersive experiences spanning the platforms they're flocking to now, allowing them to feel as though they were right there at the center of the action. Our digital and social activations around the 2015 MTV EMA were groundbreaking, engaging, and…well, badass.
