The Social Media Water Cooler – A Look Into The Grammys

Directly on the heels of our widely received look into advertisers use of Mobile during the Super Bowl, we’re continuing to observe that Social Media is becoming an increasing part of live television events. Whether at home or in the seats, fans, entertainers, athletes, and brands are all interacting through Digital technology.

As more brands realize that the opportunity to connect with customers never ends, you notice an immersion of sorts in Social Media as a channel. In this instance, much of the activity is user generated, which is the true essence of Social Media. That, however, did not stop brands from taking advantage of this golden opportunity. In fact, the Grammys themselves did a great job by promoting their digital offerings through the television, web page, Twitter, Facebook and YouTube profiles.

According to Mashable and Bluefin Labs, Social Media participation hit a record high during this year’s 54th Annual Grammy Awards broadcast. This should come as no surprise as Social Media channels are continuing to add members and we as users, continue to interact with each other and our favorites brands.

The infographic below says it best:

Notable Stats

• 13 million social comments -Almost 10M more than the MTV Movie Awards in 2011.
• 2.1 M Tweets
• 2,280% growth year over year! – Up from 546k last year
• Adele and Chris Brown each reached over 400k response / 5 min

Trending Items & Hashtags

We observed the following prominent hashtags utilized:

• #grammys
• #performing (Bing advertisements to promote artists)

Performance Sentiment

Not only was Social Media utilized as a way to market for brands, but also as a measure of [consumer] sentiment. As you can see below, the sentiment was very positive for Adele and mainly positive for the tribute to Whitney Houston.

Bing TV Spots & Sponsored Tweets

One advertiser in particular stood out from the mainstream:  Bing. You would’ve noticed a television spot featuring Wiz Khalifa, which tied into a sponsored tweet on Twitter. Through the twitter link, you were prompted to click the link using the hashtag #performing. When clicking on a trending item through the iPhone twitter app, you’ll be able to see sponsored tweets.

Grammy Live & Second Screen Experience

Grammy Live was a huge success this year, bringing in 1 million unique viewers across the web, iPhone and iPad. To put that in perspective, 2.1 million viewers tuned into the Super Bowl live stream — and that was broadcasting the actual game, not an additional experience.

Summary

As a digital agency, we’re passionate about what we do and love to observe and analyze new trends.  Not that we’re calling this a new trend, but the recent leaps in engagement have caught our attention. Brands have already begun to realize the effectiveness and usefulness of Social Media as a channel, but many are still trying to get the strategy and execution components. We explain to clients all the time that execution without strategy can lead to failure. Your customers are out there and using the channel. Why not position yourself where they are, provide value and capitalize from the opportunity? If you haven’t figured it our yet, we’re confident we can help. Until then, we hope you enjoyed our brief look into Social Media and live events.

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