Celebrities and organizations chatter on Twitter about Animal Planet’s Puppy Bowl.
Most public relations practitioners have become very familiar with the concept of influencer marketing; the concept of targeting people who can influence your audience or customer’s decisions. But in the television world, you don’t hear much about it. Despite the unheard words, the television space does show signs of influencer marketing in the digital space. With more recognition of this type of marketing in the television industry, perhaps media companies can refine their online and on-air tactics and business objectives?
Who qualifies as the influencer?
For those who are a bit unfamiliar with influencer marketing, let’s have a quick chat about how it works. Kevin Cain wrote a wonderful post on Convince and Convert that broke down the elements of influencer marketing. As Cain states in his post, it’s all about finding the people who influence your target audience’s decisions. If the British group One Direction supported a teen health campaign and openly talked about its benefits, teen fans are more likely to get involved or at least visit the campaign’s website for more information. After getting a seal of approval from a huge influencer, the campaign could attempt to build a relationship with the group to help expand the campaign’s reach even further. Some companies prefer to seek out the influencer by listening to online conversations. Thought leaders online will emerge and the company will look to create a relationship. Get the point? That’s influencer marketing in its simplest form. There is much more to it, but for the purposes of looking at the ways television networks are using it, this is enough to get the conversation started.
Influencing the audience
There are three ways I see television networks possibly using influencer marketing:
- Asking on-air talent with huge followings to cross-promote other shows within the network online.
- Creating the influencer through characters.
- Partnering with advertisers in online conversations and content creation.
Meep the Bird reports the action on the field, encouraging fans to tune in.
Especially in the cable television world, viewers can see on-air talent cross-promoting other network shows on Twitter and Facebook. For example, Lifetime may ask Project Runway host, Heidi Klum, to tweet about the new premiere of Project Runway All Stars (if you haven’t seen this show before, Heidi Klum does not host the All Stars seasons). Because Klum’s show is on Lifetime and it’s similar to Project Runway All Stars, it makes sense for the network to ask her to tweet about the premiere. This serves as a reminder to all of her Twitter fans to tune in for the All Stars season, expanding the network’s reach and perhaps influencing the fans’ decision to watch. Media corporations that own multiple networks will have each network’s talent cross-promote other network programming. If you loved this year’s Shark Week, perhaps you would like Animal Planet’s extreme fish tank show, Tanked?
Public relations practitioners look for an influencer. The beauty of television is that this medium can create the influencer. How so? It can create lovable characters. Animal Planet hosts an annual furry-fun Super Bowl Sunday event called Puppy Bowl. One year, Animal Planet introduced to the world Meep the Bird, a bird that “tweets” the action on the puppy football field. Every year, Animal Planet reminds its current social media following of the cheerful bird’s account prior to the show’s airing. Today, Meep has over 27,000 followers and can be considered an influencer on a viewer’s decision to watch the show or visit the Animal Planet website. As of June, Meep started promoting Animal Planet’s new live camera website, Animal Planet L!ve. What was once a silly on-air character has become a Twitter community leader.
Shark Week and VW fans come together on Twitter to support the car company’s Shark Week content.
Lastly, television networks look to advertising as a source of revenue. Today, they not only sell on-air ad space, but also offer space on its multiple digital platforms. If the network and the ad partner create social media messages to disseminate online before, during, and after the show, both the followers from the network and the advertiser will be exposed to the other company. This brings in new audiences for the network and new followers for the company. An example of this is Shark Week. In recent years, Volkswagen (VW) has been purchasing advertising space on-air and online for exposure on Shark Week. But Volkswagen doesn’t just run an ad, it creates content for Discovery and sends out tweets to support the non-fiction network. This year, VW created an underwater car that drives through shark infested waters, and was featured on-air and on YouTube. Online, Shark Week and VW fans could follow the car’s journey and gain a 360-degree view of its surroundings. The ad was also shared on the Shark Week and VW Twitter accounts. Likely, Shark Week fans started to check out VW’s website and social media accounts, while VW fans started exploring Discovery’s offerings, and hopefully tuned-in at some point in the week.
Lauren Nicole Miller 