On choosing YouTube to host the series"TV and chronological social channels can feel fleeting. If your audience isn't watching that show or checking their feed that day, it's gone. We chose YouTube as a hub in part because our content lives there for as long as we want. Our YouTube channel is a collection, a library, a content repository. People on YouTube care less about when a video is posted and more about whether or not it's relevant to them in the moment."
On real-time marketing for live events like the MTV Video Music Awards"There's a fallacy out there that real-time marketing happens at the last minute. A lot of our content was at least partially created before the VMAs ever began. Our creative team prepared content for different outcomes or situations that could occur during the event. They designed and wrote content that can be manipulated easily in the moment. That way, almost everything could be approved ahead of time, and all the team had to do to make it relevant was swap in a word here or a photo there."
On establishing a two-way dialogue"For us, content isn't 'we post; you respond.' We stick around to have an authentic, ongoing, two-way dialogue with our fans.…To prepare for that audience interaction, we carefully train every community manager (CM) who works with us. We figure out as a team what the message should be in the various situations they'll encounter, and then we train our CMs to adjust that generic messaging so that we sound personal, never forced or canned."
