Reality shows have been always a success in Brazil, and culinary TV contests are the "flavor of the month": trendy, with good ratings and awesome social media buzz. How could a TV station join that battle, for the first time, and get out on top? That was our mission – that we managed to accomplish, and we will show you how.
The TV show project wasn't a shy one: we signed a major host, Buddy Valastro, for a national version of the Great Next Baker, in a joint venture between Record, Discovery Channel and Endemol Shine.
Record had the priority to run it first, and our mission was to build a social and transmedia strategy for it. A way of uniting a very traditional TV station, with a very conservative public, with the edgy, avant garde social media strategies – with an outcome even bigger than our competitors, such as the crowd-pleaser Masterchef Brazil, for an instance.
Cutting to the chase… "É hora da ação!", as Buddy himself would say (meaning "it's action time!").
The challenge was bigger because a good chunk of the show was already recorded, like most of the eliminations. The finale was, live, though. Therefore, when it came to the airing window, we had to be bold. Right from the start, we dared to use social media interference, live – even if the scenes at that moment were not.
Our social strategy included the Twitter flock to unlock mechanics, which released exclusive content on our website (and social media pages) as soon as the hashtag counter got to the goal we stipulated. Autoreplies and hashtag battles, using little cakes on the screen, were a good option as well.
In addition, we had a Twitter conversation, with the @BuddyNaRecord question and fans' answers both on screen together. We asked for photos of cakes cooked by the audience, placing the coolest among them all on TV!
We also managed to make the hashtag we created, #BuddyNaRecord, to be adopt by the fans – and trend during the season, going to the top of the worldwide list at the premiere. The same happened with the hashtag for the finale, #FinalBatalha.
Memes and GIFs, created by our team in real time, made our Twitter more powerful. Having @CakeBossBuddy, Valastro himself, tweeting with us during the episodes was also a great reinforcement.
Now for the online presence: we had an exclusive web show, on demand on our hotsite, with backstage, interviews and extra content, called Batalha dos Confeiteiros Online. Our host talked with the eliminated contestant, guests and, of course, with Buddy. More about the eliminations, tasks and cakes.
During the airing, we had "social TV" programs streaming live on our website, where guests would talk about the reality and answer questions from the audience – that could join the conversation using their social accounts.
For the premiere, we invited famous YouTubers (with cooking channels) to comment the first episode, live, also streaming on our website and with the social TV concept. Prior to the finale, we invited three other youtube stars to be part of a contest: who would bake the best orange cake. The public could chose the winner on a poll, on our website. And we had branded content amongst the whole project, in a very well-placed manner.
The results were so amazing that they went even above our already high expectations.
We had only 11 episodes for this season (ten and the finale). All of them made it to the worldwide trending topics on Twitter, and both the debut and the finale reached the top – with Buddy making the audience aware of that, live:
Batalha dos Confeiteiros Brasil turned out so well that even in a public poll, made by R7's main competitor, UOL, our show was elected the best reality in Brazil in 2015, beating shows like Twitter-favorite Masterchef and even Big Brother Brasil, that used to be the biggest reality here. The TV ratings, as well, were above our culinary competitors.
It was also the most talked about brazilian TV show in September, month of the premiere, on social media, according to WorldScreen.com. The 4th top show in the world.
The premiere had more than 3 million Twitter impressions, while the finale had 3 more million. The official website had more than 10 million page views during the season.
Such numbers prompted the parts to renew the show for a second season, which will happen on 2016.
