(Doritos' "Crash the Super Bowl" User-Submitted Ad Was a Social Media Hit)
If you’ve been following our series on “Social Cinema,” you’ll know we’ve set ourselves the task of rounding up the latest news and initiatives by the movie industry to capitalize on technology and our socially connected culture to reach and engage viewers in hopes of boosting declining ticket and DVD sales.
As we’ve followed the rise of TV’s own efforts to hold onto eyeballs—often realized through “Second Screen” or “Co-Viewing” solutions—it’s become clear that the two “Socials” were so closely related that it would make sense to cover them under the combined banner of “Social Hollywood.”
So without further “adobe,” here are just a few of the latest developments, observations, and efforts by Hollywood to harness social media and other new technologies to keep consumers in front of screens—and often multiple screens.
[UK] Teenagers ‘prefer social media to TV’
(The Telegraph)
To kick off this week’s discussion, it seems germane to highlight some recent data about just how entrenched the highly coveted teenage demographic has become in social media. According to a poll conducted by UK-based ClickConsult, “Sixty-five percent of the 16-24 year-olds who were polled for the survey listed talking to their friends via Facebook and Twitter as their top leisure activity,” reports The Telegraph’s Emma Barnett.
Barnett points to UK television’s awareness of the trend and cites Channel 4’s move to generate online views through an online game version of it’s the Million Pound Drop, a shift that’s earned the game 11 million plays since its 2010 launch.
Barnett quotes ClickConsult’s Matt Bullas on the matter. “The social media revolution is not new, but for it to now take over from the nation’s favourite pastime for the younger audience, truly indicates how quickly leisure habits are evolving in our digital age.”
Social Super Bowl 2012
On that note, we must call attention to this past weekend’s Super Bowl, which, as many predicted, was an enormous night for social media engagement.
This year’s Super Bowl was unquestionably a win for Second Screen viewing, as tablet owners (whose numbers doubled over the holiday season) took to Twitter, Facebook, Tumblr, and all manner of social media to play “armchair quarterback” along with the game’s broadcast. According to data from BlueFin Labs, with “12.2M comments, Super Bowl XLVI is the largest social TV event ever recorded by far. The previous record holder was the MTV Video Music Awards (Aug 2011), which had 3.1M comments. Compared with last year’s Super Bowl, yesterday’s event experienced almost 600% growth!”
600. Percent.
Advertisers had clearly gotten the memo and threw all manner of social-related hooks at viewers. While the buzz about this year’s commercials leaned on the disappointed side, there’s no denying the social media real-time feedback they generated. According to BlueFin and AdAge’s top-10 chart below, the highest-engaging spot from H&M led the pack with 108,914 social media comments and even Samsung’s “The Next Big Thing” spot, in last place on the chart, earned 25,512 comments. Whether they were positive or negative comments wasn’t factored in, but as they say, “there’s no such thing as bad publicity…”
(Chart via AdAge/BlueFun Labs)
Some brands took advantage of the year’s biggest TV night to create unique campaigns involving user-generated content, such as Dorito’s “Crash the Super Bowl” campaign, which selected and aired two spots out of 6,100 user submissions. Kevin T. Willson’s slingshot baby spot took the cake, with USA Today ranking it #1 in their Facebook Super Bowl Ad Meter.
Flingo raises $7 million
(StreamingMedia.com)
In non-football-related news, Flingo, “which creates apps for smart TV’s, has raised $7 million in Series A funding from August Capital,” reported StreamingMedia.com. The move is designed to help Flingo’s plan to get more of its apps on device and improve its “automatic content recognition (ACR) system,” which can identify broadcast programs as they air. Once a Flingo app has identified a program, it delivers contextual information to a TV, notebook, or mobile device,” reported Troy Deier. Flingo apps will soon be integrated into A&E and History Channel programming, according to the post.
Milyoni and Talleres Uchawi Launch Lecciones Para Un Beso (Lessons for a Kiss) on Facebook This Valentine’s Day to Worldwide Audience
(MarketWatch)
Milyoni, which has led the way in Social Cinema viewing on Facebook, has partnered with Colombian production company Talleres Uchawi to launch Lecciones Para Un Beso (Lessons for a Kiss) on Facebook on Valentine’s Day. The film will debut on the social network with a live broadcast and chat with director Juan Pablo Bustamante, and the film’s studio is hoping to reach an international audience on Facebook beyond Colombia. The film will be available on-demand with English subtitles through the Social Cinema Facebook platform for 10 Facebook Credits or $.99 via PayPal.
We’re just getting started. What do you think about Social Cinema and Social TV? Would you be more likely to watch a film via Facebook than in the theatre? Let us know in the comments and connect with us on Twitter, Facebook, Google+, and LinkedIn. And be sure to register for our FREE Resource Center and Newsletter to access our growing library of valuable Guide Books, Tip Sheets, and more!
Ryan Swearingen is Managing Editor of the Blog Network at Magnet Media and co-founder/editor of Stated Magazine.
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