Chapter 10
Conclusion (for Now)
Connecting the Dots
At eight o’clock on June 26, 2011, it was show time for the eleventh annual BET Awards. Having set a goal of being the “most social” awards show ever, BET’s strategy fired on just about every possible social TV thruster. And it all started well before the show went on-air.
BET looked no further than its very own 106 & Park and leveraged the show’s daily built-in, hyper-lean-forward viewing audience as a jumping off platform to promote the network’s awards and drive tune-in. Two weeks prior to the awards show TV broadcast, the network announced “Fandemonium” on 106 & Park, which tasked viewers with daily challenges to use various kinds of social media to express their loyalty to pop stars Chris Brown, Lady Gaga, Nicki Minaj, or Mindless Behavior. BET strategically chose to feature these four particular BET Awards artists due to their inherent and extremely active fans within the social web.
The brilliance behind the network’s preshow promotional blitz was that they cleverly tapped into and energized the fanbases of BET’s most socially engaged TV show and celebrity artists. Each Fandemonium challenge was designed at its core to generate volumes of valuable social impressions to amplify awareness of the BET Awards. For example, the first challenge asked 106 & Park viewers to go to Facebook.com/TheBETAwards, “like” the page, and then find and “like” the photo of their favorite artist (out of the four) as a means of voting. Of course, ...
