Last month we wrote about MTV’s partnership with Our2ndLife (O2L)– the pop culture blogger boy band – in the lead up to the 2014 MTV Movie Awards.
MTV has made the use of social influencers for tent pole events a large part of their strategy, and O2L’s impact has already been felt. “The community they’ve built is off-the-charts engaged,” Tom Fishman, Vice President of Content Marketing and Fan Engagement for MTV, told Lost Remote. “That’s led to spikes in MTV Movie Awards voting, to tons of globally trending topics on Twitter, to hundreds of thousands of streams and tens of millions of impressions. Ultimately, it’s further driven credibility and affinity between our brand and our audience, and it’s given these six creative kids a brand new, huge platform to express themselves. That’s the stuff you take with you after the event is over.”
Another way that MTV will be leveraging influencers for Sunday night’s show is via a Tumblr War Room. The network is partnering with well-known Tumblr artists who will be in one room at Tumblr’s New York City headquarters creating artistic interpretations of the awards show in real-time.
“We’re always striving to evolve our relationships with great platform partners like Tumblr, and with up and coming influential artists and creative,” Fishman said of the partnership. “With the War Room, we loved the idea of literally closing the distance between those creatives, Tumblr and MTV. We’re aiming for a deeper relationship with them than just paying them for GIFs.”
MTV is also bringing back All Access Live for this year’s show. It will combine the social conversation around the show with the opportunity for fans to co-create content; viewers will be able to cut their own GIFs from the ‘MTV Cut’ cam. Building on the GIF theme, MTV will also be partnering with popular original GIF makers Mr. GIF to create live GIFs throughout the night’s events.