The 2012 MTV VMAs Dominate the Social Sphere

Despite having top name musical acts such as Rihanna, Alicia Keys, One Direction, and Lil Wayne perform at the 2012 MTV VMAs, the show suffered a significant ratings dip compared to last years show. MTV only pulled in 6.13 million viewers this year, compared to 12.8 million that watched the 2011 VMAs, according to TV By the Numbers.

However, the 2012 MTV VMAs managed to generate a high-level of interest and activity across various social media platforms, outperforming the previous years show on the web. According to the social-monitoring site Trendrr, the event managed to generate over 19 million mentions on social-media sites such as Facebook, Twitter, Get Blue, and Viggle. Within the broadcast itself, the show managed to generate over 13 million mentions and overall generated three times the response on social-media platforms compared to the 2011 VMAs.

What is most interesting is that the majority of content that was shared across social-media platforms was from females. Of the content that was shared, 71% of it came from women while the remaining 29% came from men. On the surface it might seem a bit perplexing as to why females generated so much content relating to the VMAs, but look a little closer and it starts to make a bit more sense.

Pop stars that are popular among girls such as the British pop group One Direction, who one three awards, and teen idol Justin Bieber who received three nominations, were prominently featured during the broadcast. Looking at the chart, a huge spike in social sharing occurred when One Direction won Best New Artist, and in total the group was mentioned over two million times online.

Additionally, One Direction’s song “What Makes You Beautiful”, won Most Sharable Video as fans used the hashtag #voteonedirection to vote for the video on Twitter. Their hashtag was tweeted more than 27 million times, and their closest competitor Justin Bieber, generated more than 26 million tweets for his video for his song “Boyfriend” in the same category using the hashtag #votebieber.

2012 MTV Social Content Tracker

Furthermore, MTV heavily promoted social media interaction during the award show, as well as creating a social media tracker on their Facebook page. As I was watching the pre-show, the MTV announcers would either mention the most popular VMA-related content being shared/liked on Facebook, ask viewers to tweet using the #VMA hashtag, display the number of tweets being sent and briefly discuss content being shared about the VMAs in real time (I remember at one point over five million tweets were sent mentioning the VMAs).

Over on Facebook, MTV created a VMA Timeline Tracker that displayed the most popular and up-to-date content, as well as how many likes each one was receiving Facebook. The content was divided into categories that included Beauty+Fashion, News, Performers, and All Topics.

 

Even though the 2012 VMAs outperformed the 2011 VMAs in terms of socially-generated content, will the same happen again next year if any popular teen idols aren’t facing off in the same categories, or is this a rising trend MTV should continue to push and promote?

Works Cited:

Bibel, Sara (2012, Sep 10). Thursday Cables Rating ‘Video Music Awards’ Win Night, DNC Coverage, ‘Project Runway’, ‘Sullivan and Son’, ‘Pawn Stars’, ‘House Hunters’ & More. Retrieved from http://tvbythenumbers.zap2it.com/2012/09/07/thursday-cable-ratings-video-music-awards-win-night-dnc-coverage-project-runway-sullivan-son-pawn-stars-house-hunters-more/147768/

Captain, Sean (2012, Sep 7). DNC and Obama not match for MTV Awards on Twitter. Retrieved from http://www.mnn.com/lifestyle/arts-culture/stories/dnc-and-obama-no-match-for-mtv-awards-on-twitter

Dumenco, Simon (2012, Sep 7). Social TV Blockbuster. The MTV Video Music Awards Totally Killed It Last Night. Retrieved from http://adage.com/article/trending-topics/mtv-vmas-a-social-tv-blockbuster-night/237082/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed:+AdvertisingAge/LatestNews+%28Advertising+Age+-+Latest+News%29&utm_content=Google+Reader

 

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