At the Social TV Summit last month, Facebook’s Andy Mitchell told the audience that he’s “pretty confident” the massive social network can help drive ratings. Since Facebook has more than 800 million active users, most networks have adopted a strategy of creating show-specific pages to create and nurture the communities around their shows. This is also the case for VH1’s ‘Tough Love,’ a reality show about matchmaking and dating advice, hosted by matchmaker and celeb-host Steven Ward.
Nigel Cox-Hagan, VH1’s Executive Vice President, Creative Group and Consumer Marketing, gave us an in-depth interview on how they earned over 45,000 new Facebook fans since the end of September by launching the “Ditch or Date” Facebook app to show fans that even the worst dates can have a happy ending. Through the app, developed with their agency Attention, they crowd sourced over 10,000 ditch or date votes across 1,0000 stories from fans about their horrible dates.
Lost Remote: What was your approach to social TV with ‘Tough Love’?
Nigel Cox-Hagan: Facebook, especially over the last two years has become a very prominent platform for our branding and everything over the course of the last several years. We’ve gone from a singular approach, a single VH1 Facebook experience to a multi-faceted, multi-prong Facebook strategy. All of our major Franchises have their own Facebook page. Tough Lough, Top Twenty Countdown, our Music shows. We have Facebook pages for our specific reality shows. That evolution is the underpinning of what led us to crate this app for Tough Lough.
LR: What was your strategy with the app you created on Facebook?
NCH: We know Tough Love, from three or so cycles. We knew it had a solid fan base. We knew they really love the host, Steven Ward, the love guru, via his special brand of tough medicine of giving love advice. Our strategy has been to create Facebook pages, that focus on fans of specific shows, so they can go and share and engage in the experience of the show. We decided to create an app that replicated a lot of what the audience finds attractive. Also, to give the fans what they would love the most, the chance to interact with Steven.
In developing this app, we took a step back, looked at the idea of the date as the primary mechanism of getting involved in a relationship. We decided to focus on a date as something to talk about, as something to share, as the commonality on which we would take the app. Everyone has a story to share about a disastrous date. Everyone likes to hear other peoples horror stories. Every Tough Love fan wants to get advice from the master himself. Finding a way to bring the fans, the followers of the show, very close together with Steven via a Facebook dialogue and specific advice he would give to a specially selected date.
LR: Who did you work with to develop the app?
NCH: Attention. We’ve worked with them a number of times. Very smart, very adaptable, very funny and we always try to have a bit of humor as part of the branding, marketing and promotional efforts. Very skillful.
LR: What kind of successes have you seen?
NCH: One of our underlying goals, was to grow the audience for Tough Love. We’ve seen the fan base grow to 104,000 since I last checked. The cycle of the show has just wrapped up, they just did the reunion. We’ve seen a tremendous amount of growth. 45,000 new fans since we launched the app. We launched the app on September 23, 2011. We had over 10,000 Ditch or Date votes on the different stories and over 1,0000 stories. They weren’t one or three sentence stories, they were horror tales. People put in a lot of time explaining what they went into. We felt there was a lot of comarordorie that the participants felt. This idea of a horrible date.
LR: How did you use linear television and partnerships to promote the app?
NCH: We had baked into the premier show a call-to-action, telling viewers to share their stories with Steven. We also did a lot off channel. We worked with a lot of partners. Both digital and traditional, which included, Sheky’s girls night out. We’d have Steven make a personal appearance at Shekys. Steven is based in Philly and we’re based in New York so we had events at Shekys in both places. Steven made an appearance, hung out and met his fans. Sheky’s promoted heavily through their own email, social media and website. We also partnered with Zagat for a custom Ditch or Date guide, through Zagat.com, their newsletter and social media.
In addition to on-air promotions, we used graphics on our own web sites and banners within the MTV family. Our blogs talked about it, we had a CRM email, which allows us to capture names and demo data across our Viacom family so we can target likely people who would be interested. We used our own social media actively, Twitter and Facebook.
There was a Ditch or Date segment featured on Jimmy Fallon that we we re able to score with our own press department, a segment on Elvis Duran’s morning show, which is syndicated in 41 markets. Buddy TV, Monsters and Critics, Betty Confidential, Pop Crunch, Celebuzz, Hollywood Life, and Social Vixen who gave coverage or linkage.
Depending on what the horror story, we tried to match the prize to the story. For example, we gave one participant Dr. Dre Monster Beats headphones so she could block out the noise from her date. It was a great opportunity for us to give something to the fan base, some sympathy and maybe a prize.
LR: What can we expect for the future?
NCH: The show will be moving to New Orleans and there’s a lot of trouble to be had there. Facebook helps us keep the life of that franchise going on when the linear cycle is over. Now we’ve established a community around Tough Love, that we can continue to nurture. We haven’t gotten the killer idea yet for the next promotion but we will definitely be using Facebook as a way to let them know when the show will come back and what to look forward to.