Social media and MTV: how social is changing the dynamics of MTV awards shows
In August the MTV Video Music Awards (VMAs) generated 120 US and worldwide trending topics on Twitter and 1.2 million Instagram likes, with Miley Cyrus’ now infamous performance with Robin Thicke shattering the record for most tweets per minute, revealing just how integral social media has become to MTV and its audience.
With a target audience spanning 12-34 year olds, MTV is constantly innovating to engage and interact with its digital savvy audience who embrace, adopt new social media platforms at alarming pace. In June, MTV was one of the first brands to use time-limited photo and video-sharing app Snapchat to promote the sixth series of its hit reality show Geordie Shore, and this year’s European Music Awards (EMAs) – which take place on Sunday 10 November - has been heavily promoted across newer channels such as Vine, Google+ and Instagram.
“Each year we continue to innovate and build on the year before,” explained SVP Digital at Viacom International Media Networks (VIMN), Phillip O’Ferrall, in conversation with The Drum ahead of Sunday’s event.
“We work across a bunch of platforms because as the years go on, and the months go on, there are newer platforms which become more significant to our audience…Our fans are of the millennial, and even post and pre-millennial generation, they’re born digital and born connected.”
And it is this desire to be connected that drives how MTV engages its audience, especially around live events such as the VMAs and EMAs. With this year marking the first time MTV has used fans to announce award nominees.
According to O’Ferrall digital and social media has enabled MTV to “create many, many weeks of build-up” in order to “drive fan conversation around the event in advance”.
One such way MTV generates fan interest in the event is to engage the “talent” involved.
“All of the acts within the show are a big part of our fan outreach, we work closely with the artists giving them the tools to talk about the event and drive people to the event. It’s about fan engagement on the artists’ websites and on the artists’ social media. It’s a big part of what we do.
“We’ve done some very smart things in the past like use Justin Bieber as a social media host and a number of the artists we get involved are massively engaged in social media, I think most talent are these days,” he said.
The case is certainly true of this year’s raft of EMA performers. Not only has Cyrus been invited back, no doubt to generate some of the same money-can’t-buy publicity she brought to the VMAs, the most followed person on Twitter, Katy Perry will also take to the stage on Sunday. Both ladies combined boast over 60 million followers on Twitter.
Of the event itself O’Ferrall reveals that social media will play a starring role during proceedings: “As with the VMAs we’ll be pushing out tweets as the show is happening with video clips and images.
“Social media forms a big part of the backstage production, as someone’s coming to the red carpet we’ll be there and do a quick tweet and Instagram with them, then as they come off the red carpet and have something to say to camera that’ll be sent out immediately to their fanbase. It’s all about giving the fans the opportunity to feel like their part of each bit of the show including backstage and pre-show.”
Last year’s EMAs in Frankfurt generated over 5 million tweets, spawned 32 worldwide trending topics and notched eight of the top 10 trends during with the show, with social engagement this year on track to eclipse those figures, showing that the relationship between awards shows and social media has only just begun.