Heading into the second year of Pitbull's New Year's Revolution on FOX, we set out to create a multiplatform campaign that would drive tune-in and excitement leading up to the live event and further the show's positioning as the youngest, freshest, and coolest take on New Year's Eve.
In its premiere year (2014), the show pulled in an audience that was younger and more diverse than any other New Year's special, according to Nielsen. So for its second year, we wanted to offer that audience the strong social content and engagement they deserve and expect.
We set out to make fans feel that this was THEIR party, one in which they could participate and get behind-the-scenes access. We set out to partner with major digital platforms, especially those in the music space, to bring unique content and interactive opportunities to our audience and attract new eyeballs to the show. In addition, we knew we had a great asset in Pitbull himself, and planned to work closely with him to engage his tremendous fan base and raise awareness and excitement for the special across social media.
Starting a few weeks before New Year's Eve, Pitbull's New Year's Revolution began to roll out content across social media platforms. The news of our headliner and performers broke on Twitter, beginning with a tweet conversation between Pitbull (over 21 million followers) and P. Diddy (over 10 million followers) with the rest of the talent (and their enormous fan bases) quickly joining in to announce that they would be coming to the party.
Looking to get the attention of the fans of our many amazing artists, we partnered with Spotify, the top music streaming platform in the world, to host a New Year's Revolution playlist on Pitbull's Spotify page (over 10 million monthly listeners). The playlist featured songs from all of the performers, which we used to get fans hyped for the show. Subsequently, we launched "Let The Fans Choose", a call-to-action across social media encouraging fans to vote (via streaming a song from the playlist) for one of two songs they wanted Pitbull to perform LIVE in show. This gave fans agency over the television event itself as they had to tune-in on NYE to see which song was announced as the "Spotify Fan Favorite Song of the Year" and then watch Pitbull perform it live.
We continued to tap into music fans with a partnership with Shazam, where users received New Year's Revolution content and a push to the Spotify playlist whenever they Shazamed Pitbull's songs or visited his Shazam page (over 49 million followers). Shazam also participated in social media cross-promotion and received a shout-out on air before a key Pitbull performance to tie the whole activation together.
To further build excitement and awareness leading up to the event, we launched a Snapchat account for the show, with Pitbull and the show's other social media profiles promoting to build the account's following. We snapped exclusive live rehearsal and backstage footage of our performers, which fans flocked to and immediately shared across other social media platforms.
The day of the event, we continued to take Snapchat by storm with a custom Snapchat filter that was accessible to users in the Miami area, allowing them to share their own photos and videos of Miami's hot, party atmosphere with the rest of the country.
We also had a Twitter Challenger booth on site throughout the night, which prompted guests and talent to create New-Year's-themed GIFs, videos, and selfies and push them out live to Twitter.
In addition to pushing out live content from on site to social media throughout the day and night of the show, we pushed the show's official hashtag and our talents' Twitter handles on-air, and also placed audience tweets on air to display audience reactions to key moments in the show in real time and further drive social engagement.
Pitbull's New Year's Revolution lit up social, and fans were hyped from the announcement (which trended in multiple cities) all the way through NYE. The show was the only New Year's show up in Nielsen ratings vs. 2014, as the primetime portion grew by 29% in viewers 18-49.
The Spotify and Shazam partnerships amplified the excitement, as Spotify featured the show's playlist on their homepage "Trending" section and included Pitbull as a "Featured Follow." On Shazam, the show received highly coveted placement on their listening-screen (main landing page) all day on NYE. This resulted in a 54% increase in the show's activity on Shazam vs. 2014 and over 32 million devices were served New Year's Revolution content on Shazam, driving engagement and pushing tune-in.
The conversation was buzzing by 12/30, with fans excitedly responding to behind-the-scenes footage across social. On NYE, #PitbullNYE trended in the U.S. on Twitter throughout the nearly 4-hour live event. The show ranked #2 on Nielsen's Twitter TV Ratings for NYE, and saw a 21% increase in unique authors year-over-year. The on-air Twitter placements were key to the show's Twitter success, with the top five most social Twitter moments correlating to onscreen prompts, especially the audience tweets.
Pitbull's New Year's Revolution came with an incredibly robust social campaign that brought fans the content and engagement they craved. The show was a huge success across multiple platforms, firmly cementing its place as the youngest, freshest, HOTTEST New Year's party on television.
