The Behind the Social Media Campaign Series is supported by Oneupweb, an award-winning agency specializing in search marketing, social media and design for mid-to-enterprise level brands. Download Oneupweb’s free whitepaper, “Measuring Social Media’s Contribution to the Bottom Line: 5 Tactics.”
If you’re not familiar with it, The Voice features musician coaches Christina Aguilera, Cee Lo Green, Adam Levine and Blake Shelton, along with host Carson Daly. During “blind auditions,” singers performed one at a time, and if they caught the attention of one the judges — based on voice alone, as the judges were turned around — then they would join that coach’s team. Each team started with eight artists, then were whittled down to four. The coaches, all of whom have achieved success in the music industry, are grooming the artists and developing their voices and performance skills. Each week, a few artists are eliminated, and the last one standing will be crowned “The Voice.”
Mashable spoke with Nicolle Yaron, the show’s supervising producer, Andrew Adashek, the social media consultant, and Alison Haislip, the social media correspondent, about the show’s social media integration and why it’s effective.
The Voice isn’t exactly a new show — it was adapted from a Dutch television show called The Voice of Holland. During its first season, the show began trending on Twitter worldwide, and NBC executives realized that there was something to the format. Executive Producers Mark Burnett and Audrey Morrissey were passionate about the highly social program and “stood behind us” as the American crew adapted the show, says Yaron.
The Dutch set had screens with live tweets, a social media room, a social media correspondent and a website. Yaron says NBC’s challenge was to take the format from something that serves a small country the size of Rhode Island and make it work over multiple time zones, and also create much more noise and value and push the boundaries in American TV.
“From the very beginning, the social media and digital aspect of the show was very important to us,” says Yaron. She wanted to create active engagement and offer accessibility to the coaches to mirror how the show offers access to top stars. “We wanted to create a true, real-time co-viewing experience.”
The American version expanded the social aspect to include coach tweets, as well as fan tweets, and because of the massive audience, NBC had to create a filtering program to manage the volume (something the Dutch didn’t have to deal with). So while the idea derived from Holland, the U.S. crew had to develop an entire infrastructure to manage the social media content that would be generated each week.
But what separates The Voice from other social television shows is that NBC doesn’t use social media as an awareness and marketing tool — it is core to the show as a whole, so the digital integrations are very organic. “In this day and age, digital and social media for a successful television show can’t be an afterthought — it has to be established in pre-production and developed throughout the show,” Yaron says. She and Adashek laid out a three-stage digital strategy and spent countless hours figuring out the social media strategy and how the show would leverage the judges and the artists. “All the goals we set out have been reached or exceeded, and I think it’s only going to grow and grow as we go into next season. As digital and social media change, we will change too. We set the trends now and we will incorporate new technologies as they develop.”
The show is called The Voice, and not surprisingly the four judges all have distinct radio voices — the raspy Cee Lo Green, the belting Christina Aguilera, the high tenor Adam Levine and the crooner Blake Shelton. Christina wasn’t even on Twitter when she joined the cast as a coach, but her effusive “you go girl” tweets and diva-stacked team have garnered her more than 440,000 followers since she joined — and she has only tweeted 47 times. While Christina’s not the most active tweeter, Yaron says her fans are the most dedicated, and on the show’s premiere day, the “bionic army” had #TeamXtina trending from 9 a.m. until the premiere.
Green had a Twitter account before the show, but wasn’t very active. Levine was moderately active and Shelton was very active on Twitter. But all four coaches had to step up their game for the show, since NBC pushed coach engagement. Since the show is about the artist’s journey under the leadership of the coaches, Yaron says she wanted the coaches to live-tweet the show and broadcast the feeds onscreen in real time “so we continue the storytelling and enhance the experience for the viewers” even when the coach is not on camera. One joke amongst the crew is the “bromance” between Shelton and Levine, which is unabashedly broadcast on Twitter and followed by many of the show’s fans.
Much of the digital integration onscreen in driven by Alison Haislip, who’s no stranger to digital and social media — she spent four years at tech and gaming site G4. Now she’s The Voice‘s “in-show and online correspondent” hanging out in the V-Room with the contestants and serving as “your direct digital connection to everything” related to The Voice.
If you watch the show, you’ll notice that “#TheVoice” isn’t always on the screen reminding you to vote — it’s strategically placed onscreen at times when the producers feel the audience “would be compelled to talk about it.” And it’s an effective strategy. Yaron says that 70% of the tweets about the The Voice include the hashtag #TheVoice, a “phenomenal” rate that a Twitter spokesperson says is an “industry high.”
Last week, during the first of the live shows, tweets that used #TheVoice or the handle of the show, a coach name or an artist name appeared in the lower third section of the screen during parts of the live show. In the V-Room, Haislip is tasked with bridging the online and broadcast elements of the show, and encourages fans to take their dialogue to Facebook, Twitter, NBC Live and NBC.com. “Fans could tweet or post on our Facebook wall and then I could, on air, ask the artists the questions and fans can see the response,” says Haislip. “It really engages the viewers instead of letting them sit back — they become a part of the show.”
The challenge has been managing the sheer volume of tweets — during airtime, there are upwards of 3,000 tweets per minute. “Filtering tweets live has been really interesting because as the show is progressing, the conversation around the show really transforms,” says Adashek. “We have to make sure it fits within broadcast standards, and we want to keep the tweets super fresh and relevant to what the viewers are seeing on TV.” (In case you’re wondering, the West Coast sees a rebroadcast of the East Coast show, so the “live tweets” are taken from the initial airing. However, the West Coast viewers are activated in other ways, and Haislip encourages them to live tweet.)
NBC has been working closely with Twitter to master the live tweet process, and Adashek says Twitter has been very helpful and “really forthcoming with a lot of data and metrics,” which helps the show maximize the impact of its social media-centric platform and also measure its success.
And it is indeed successful. Adashek says that last week, during the show’s first live performances, every contestant, coach and team trended, as did song titles and “Jersey Girl” — an homage to contestant Raquel Castro, who starred in the 2004 movie of that name. “Everything trended last week, no matter how good or bad it was,” he says. “There was enough inertia that everyone was trending.”
“When we look at the graphs and data on Twitter, we can see the peaks and valleys around the calls-to-action — the tweets and the hashtags and the performances,” says Adashek. “It’s like watching The Matrix — we’re pulling massive amounts of data, and when you’re seeing that many tweets, you really can see [trends and sentiment] right way.”
“Twitter was a natural first because it’s very live and real-time, so it lends itself to events,” says Adashek. Facebook is also an important platform for The Voice, but Adashek says it’s more long-term, has different content and is building a fanbase and laying the groundwork for future seasons. Since the coaches have their own highly engaged Facebook Pages, The Voice has been able to reach out to those fans and pull them to the show’s Facebook hub. For instance, last week when Team Christina performed “Lady Marmalade,” the Page gained nearly 10,000 likes within a few minutes.
The Voice is about a journey, and Yaron says the NBC.com homepage has been focusing on “24/7 storytelling and continuing all of the reality stories and experiences of the artists and the coaches and the rivalries between them.” By cultivating the story online and providing a look behind the scenes, The Voice is becoming more than just a weekly television show — it’s nonstop entertainment online, complemented by an hour or two of live performances every week.
“The artists are not sequestered, they’re encouraged to talk about the show as much as they can,” Haislip says. “Regardless of how they do on the show, they still will come out of the competition with something that is going to help them in the future, and they’re all getting a huge leap ahead of the competition.”
That “something” Haislip refers to is digital savvy and a strong fanbase. From the minute they landed in LA for blind auditions, artists were given training in blogging and Facebook Pages and handed Samsung Galaxy Tabs and cameras to document everything from team dinners to rehearsals with photo and video. Each artist has his own hub on the site that links to a blog, Facebook, Twitter, video and photos — viewers really have the opportunity to be heavily invested in the show and the artists, and that translates to better ratings and higher engagement. Giving the artists free reign has let their personalities flourish — Beverly McClellan has started a fake talk show called, “What’s Up With That?” and Jared Blake captured his new ink session on video.
“This is something that every other reality show has kind of shied away from, but we feel really strongly about it,” says Yaron. “We are giving the artists the same platform that real musicians have. We’re training them and mirroring the new ways in which the music industry works. We’re giving them the tools to be the next Lady Gaga. It will help them stay in the competition and become successful music stars. We felt that it was time for a reality show to do that.”
While traditional shows like American Idol — and even The Voice of Holland — rely on calls and texts (Idol only recently launched Facebook voting) to log votes for contestants, The Voice has emphasized digital. Of course there’s the old standard of voting by phone, but there’s also an NBC Live app, NBC.com and an iTunes-driven voting platform. Instead of texting to vote, you can vote with your wallet and purchase your favorite songs, available from Universal Republic Records. Viewers can vote up to 10 times with each method, so the show encourages cross-platform engagement.
“The iTunes component was a huge part of the digital strategy — it’s an active vote,” says Yaron.
“The story of The Voice is not just an hour or two every week,” Yaron says. “It lives online all day and all week long, and it will continue all year long. This is a living, breathing entity, it’s not just show-based.”
And it might just be the future of television.
The Behind the Social Media Campaign Series is supported by Oneupweb, an award-winning agency specializing in search marketing, social media and design for mid-to-enterprise level brands. Download the Oneupweb sponsored Marketing Sherpa free study, “Measuring Social Media’s Contribution to the Bottom Line: 5 Tactics” to learn how to cut through the clutter and be sure to catch up with them on Facebook and Twitter.
- Twitter + Random Acts of Kindness = A Successful Social Campaign
- How Barbie & Ken Were Reunited by Social Media
- Lessons Learned From The Old Spice Campaign & Its Imitators
- Was the Charlie Sheen Tweet a Win for Internships.com?
- How SCVNGR’s First National Brand Partnership Scored Big During March Madness
More About: american idol, Behind the Social Media Campaign Series, nbc universal, social media, television, the-voice, trending, tv, twitter
For more Media coverage:
If you’re seeking a job in social media, we’d like to help out. For starters, Mashable‘s Job Lists section gathers together all of our resource lists, how-tos and expert guides to help you get hired. In particular, you might want to see our articles on How to Leverage Social Media for Career Success and How to Find a Job on Twitter.
But we’d like to help in a more direct way, too. Mashable‘s job boards are a place for socially savvy companies to find people like you. This week and every week, Mashable features its coveted job board listings for a variety of positions in the web, social media space and beyond. Have a look at what’s good and new on our job boards:
Business Development Coordinator at Mashable in New York, NY.
Executive Assistant at Mashable in New York, NY.
Community Assistant at Mashable in New York, NY.
Community Director at Mashable in New York, NY.
Community Intern at Mashable in New York, NY.
Editorial Intern at Mashable in New York, NY.
Tech Reporter at Mashable in San Francisco, CA.
Communications Coordinator at Mashable in New York, NY.
Regional Sales Director at Mashable in San Francisco, CA.
Campaign Specialist at Mashable in New York, NY.
Video Editor at MTV World in New York, NY.
Social Media Specialist at Beyond Indigo Pets in Dover, NH.
UX Designer at Beezag in New York, NY.
UI Designer at Beezag in New York, NY.
Associate Manager, Web Design & Administration at Wildlife Conservation Society in Bronx, NY.
Communications Designer at Philadelphia College of Osteopathic Medicine in Philadelphia, PA.
Marketing Copywriter at Infomedics in Reading, MA.
Product Manager at Bluefly in New York, NY.
Associate Product Manager at Toolbox.com in Scottsdale, AZ.
Online Marketing Coordinator at InterMundo Media, LLC in Boulder, CO.
Product Manager – Internal Applications at Yelp Inc in San Francisco, CA.
Product Manager – Business Products at Yelp Inc. in San Francisco, CA.
Communications Associate – PR at Consumer Reports in Yonkers, NY.
Senior Product Manager for User Acquisition at LivingSocial.com in San Francisco, CA.
Analyst, User Acquisitions at LivingSocial.com in San Francisco, CA.
Project Manager at A Confidential Company in Providence, RI.
VP Marketing – Member Acquisition & Business Development at Rue La La in Boston, MA.
Digital content writer/editor at A Confidential Company in Providence, RI.
Social Media Project Manager at The Pulse Network in Canton, MA.
Test Automation Engineer (Temporary) at Synacor in Buffalo, NY.
New Media Specialist at Sunshine Sachs in New York, NY.
Web/Social Media Intern at Combank Medical, Inc in Pittsburgh, PA.
Head of E-commerce/GM of Direct Sales at Quirky in New York, NY.
Senior QA Engineer at ScoreBig.com in Los Angeles, CA.
Software Engineer/Web Application Developer at Listener Driven Radio in Westlake, OH.
Cloud Application Developer at Workday in Pleasanton, CA.
Interactive Graphic Designer at A Confidential Company in Providence, RI.
Online Marketing Data Analyst at ShopAtHome.com in Englewood, CA.
Internet Marketing Coordinator/Specialist at A Confidential Company in Los Angeles, CA.
Online Marketing Specialist at Explorica, Inc in Boston, MA.
Social Media Producer at Bloomberg LP in New York, NY.
Community & Content Coordinator at Dailymotion in New York, NY.
Media/Paid Search Analyst at Earthbound Media Group in Culver City, CA.
Digital Media Planner & Buyer at GMMB in Washington, D.C.
Project Editor at Kaiser Family Foundation in Washington, D.C.
Communications Associate at Kaiser Family Foundation in Washington, D.C.
Social Media Community Manager at M80 in Los Angeles, CA.
Social Media Director at School of the Legends, LLC in Brentwood, TN.
Art Director at Code and Theory in New York, NY.
Vice President Marketing – Member Engagement at Rue La La in Boston, MA.
Director, Digital & Social Communications at Weber Shandwick in New York, NY.
Manager, US Project Management at Digitas in New York, NY.
Social Media Strategist at Marketing/Media Company in Madison, WI.
Online Marketing – Social Media Biz Development Lead at Acquinity Interactive in Deerfield Beach, FL.
Online Marketing – Web Designer/Graphic Designer at Acquinity Interactive in Deerfield Beach, FL.
Online Marketing – Senior Online Media Buyer at Acquinity Interactive in Deerfield Beach, FL.
Regional B2B Social Media Sales Associates at Circle Social Media in Clermont, FL.
Social Marketing Program Manager at IMRE, LLC in Sparks Glencoe, MD.
Business Operations Manager at Buddy Media in New York, NY.
Digital Fundraising Officer at Concern Worldwide US in New York, NY.
Community Manager at The Co3 in New York, NY.
Manager, Marketing Programs and Digital Platforms at New York Knicks in New York, NY.
Social Media Strategist/Coordinator at Intern Sushi in Los Angeles, CA.
Development Project Manager at WebPT in Phoenix, AZ.
ASP .NET Web Application Engineer/Developer at Name Dynamics, Inc. in Charlotte, NC.
Social Media Manager at Zipcar in Cambridge, MA.
iPhone/iOS Developer at Cubix Labs, Inc in Burtonsville, MD.
Web Developer at Ziff Davis Enterprise.com in New York, NY.
Experienced Affiliate and Publisher Manager at Intermundo Media, LLC in Boulder, CO.
SEO Marketing Manager at Consumer Reports in Yonkers, NY.
Front End Developer at Everyday Health in New York, NY.
Project Manager, Professional at Everyday Health in New York, NY.
Software Engineer (.NET) at Everyday Health in New York, NY.
Quality Assurance Engineer at Everyday Health in New York, NY.
Social Media Assistant at Chalkboard Music, Inc in Los Angeles, CA.
Manager/Senior Manager, Social Media at MTV Network in New York, NY.
Executive Creative Director Marketing at Discovery Communications in Silver Spring, MD.
Director, Affiliate Management at Adknowledge in Los Angeles, CA.
Mashable‘s Job Board has a variety of web 2.0, application development, business development and social networking job opportunities available. Check them out here.
Got a job posting to share with our readers? Post a job to Mashable today ($99 for a 30 day listing) and get it highlighted every week on Mashable.com (in addition to exposure all day every day in the Mashable marketplace).
Image courtesy of iStockphoto, YinYang
More About: jobs
For more Social Media coverage:
