MTV's First Snapchat Series Dishes Out Sex Education in 10 Seconds or Less

MTV is betting big on Snapchat as a way to remain relevant with teenagers, starting with its first series created specifically for the app. On Saturday, MTV will launch Pants Off, an eight-week series that explores sex and relationships. The series will takeover MTV's Discover channel every Saturday for the next two months and each weekly edition will include 12 to 14 articles, videos and images. "We've been playing around with formats on Snapchat for the last couple of months," said Garth Bardsley, vp of video at MTV Digital. "We've got a development pipeline of all different types of content that we're working on—whether it's scripted or more docuseries or themed days—with the Snapchat platform in mind." Pants Off is hosted by YouTuber and public sex educator Laci Green, who also helped launch MTV's first YouTube channel with original programming in 2014. In a minute-long segment from the new Snapchat show, Green interviews actress Lena Waithe from Masters of None about her worst sex advice. MTV launched its U.S. Discover channel in February, but declined to say how much traffic it gets. Unlike YouTube or other web series, Bardsley expects that a Snapchat-specific series will take longer to plan, primarily because content has to initially hook users in 10 seconds or less as they scroll through Discover. "You are telling your story or you're creating your show in chapters across the platform," he said. "One episode of a [traditional web series] might be a two or three-minute video—this is going to be much shorter thoughts broken up." In addition to Pants Off, MTV is also bringing back Cribs, the TV show that launched in 2000 and featured tours of celebrities and artists' homes. Trojan is sponsoring all eight takeovers with custom ads made by MTV's in-house team that feature the tagline, "Use a condom every time. Responsible AF." The brand is a long-time MTV advertiser and worked with Green last year to create a digital video series aimed at educating millennials about safe sex. It's also the second time that Trojan is advertising on Snapchat after sponsoring the app's Spring Break Live Story in March. As part of that ad buy, Trojan's ads ran within the MTV Discover channel. This time around, the brand is experimenting with specific parts of the creative process—like playing with the exact second the Trojan name appears in its 10-second spots. "Trojan's Spring Break content really resonated with users on the platform due to the contextual relevance and native look of the ads, and it also provided us with key insights to refine our content and approach moving forward," said Bruce Weiss, vp of marketing at Trojan. "Specifically we looked at the placement of the Trojan brand in the ads, strategic creative content rotation and the content themes as we developed the latest ads." Take a look at Trojan's creative below. [jwplayer btLO1cvZ-1kT9Z8rj] [jwplayer tN1ByrxI-1kT9Z8rj]

Performance Marketing

MTV's First Snapchat Series Dishes Out Sex Education in 10 Seconds or Less

Trojan signs on to sponsor 'Pants Off'

Lauren Johnson

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