The Future of Television: Live, Social, and Directed by Fans

GLOW
GLOW
Aug 24, 2017 · 4 min read

By Robert Lester and Jenn Fink

Live video has rapidly risen to “mega-trend,” as Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg likes to say. That’s hard to deny given the heavy cadence given to video and the outstanding engagement rates it garners on all platforms. Now with the advent of Facebook Live, video is blossoming in a way that it never has before. As with all new mediums, publishers and brands are faced with looming questions: HOW do I plan and execute a live stream? WHAT type of content works? And WHY use live-streaming to deliver that content?

At GLOW, we have given considerable thought to what brands and networks need to do in order to provide a real pay-off for viewers when live-streaming. Partnering with VH1’s America’s Next Top Model, we poured it all into a first-of-its kind interactive Facebook Live Fan Challenge Photoshoot.

Also read: Sampling the Future — How Immersive Experiences Are Evolving Marketing

As a premium component that accompanied our holistic social media campaign strategy to boost awareness and viewership of VH1’s America’s Next Top Model season finale, this custom social-driven production aimed to give the show’s diehard fanbase the opportunity of a lifetime — to directly interact with their favorite models and cast members. To pull this off, GLOW’s interactive team developed a custom backend solution on top of Facebook’s API that enabled multi-round timed voting and featured fan comments to give the audience the chance to style the talent, co-direct the shoots, and ultimately, be the judge.

If you’re looking to truly drive engagement while surprising and delighting your fans in new and innovative ways using Facebook Live, here are five things to consider to make your broadcast a success:

1) Know Your Audience

The VH1 ANTM audience LOVES to give their opinion, especially on Facebook, where they left very long and detailed comments about the show — paragraphs in fact. Many times a day. When we looked at these behaviors we knew with confidence that Facebook was the proper platform for executing a fan-driven activation.

2) Master the Platform

Once we knew the experience we wanted to give the audience, we had to get under the hood and make sure we could pull it off from a technology standpoint. After mapping out the most important aspects of the show to identify where we wanted to layer on interactivity, we were able to strategically develop custom back-end software to drive this concept using Facebook’s API in order to register the voting that happened in the comments thread. Having a deep knowledge of the technical limitations and possibilities of the platform is key if you want to avoid embarrassing glitches.

3) Work with the Right Talent

VH1 ANTM’s judge Drew Elliott hosted a live stream on Instagram After Show every week following each episode. It was clear that his experience with live social, his knowledge of the show, and his creative expertise that he’d be perfect for this project. Having a savvy host is important for any production, especially a live one. Of course little things surprised during the stream (no live production ever goes exactly as planned), and Drew was able to navigate that and keep things fun.

4) Trust Your Collaborators

Collaboration is key. Nobody could have predicted what this live-episode would ultimately be. There was an element of trust that we all had to have in each other to make it happen. Everyone at VH1 and GLOW was open to going big, taking risks, and trusting those risks, but collectively we then had to let go and believe what we planned would deliver.

5) Be Ready to Pivot

We pre-tested all the potential scenarios. We planned and played things out ahead. No matter how much prep you do, when you go Live everyone on the team has to be open to a pivot based on how things unfold. For example, mid-stream we found that some users weren’t fully grasping the voting as they hadn’t experienced this type of interactive mechanism before on Facebook Live. We were able to use our technology and knowledge of the platform to our advantage by pinning our directions to the top of the comment thread and writing various prompts in the video as lower thirds to help guide them through — which boosted engagement.

In the end, it was an enormous win, generating a reach of 2 million, with nearly 1 million views. While those numbers themselves can be considered successful, the pure excitement of the audience members, reflected in the 26,000+ comments, was the real proof that we provided a unique payoff that fans wanted.

As more brands understand and engage in custom Facebook Live broadcasts, we are going to see a lot more interactive productions like the VH1 ANTM Facebook LIVE. Live-made-social will be the next frontier, especially as the media landscape continues to shift and becomes even more fragmented. Yes, there’s going to be an adoption curve, but we are truly on the cusp of what’s next.

There will always be passive viewing, but this kind of instant gratification from entertainment is clearly wanted, and for our purposes, here to stay.

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Award-winning social, digital, & creative agency. NYC. http://weareglow.com

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