When the new season of Project Runway debuts Thursday night on Lifetime, fans will be encouraged to cast their votes via Twitter for their favorite designers. Using unique hashtags for each contestant, Project Runway will track the votes from viewers throughout the season to designate “Fan Favorites.” It’s the first time an A+E Networks show has tapped Twitter for audience voting.
An example screenshot. Click for larger image.
To vote for their favorites, viewers will tweet the corresponding hashtags for any of the 20 designers on the show. For example, #PR9danielle will correspond with contestant Danielle Everine. The hashtags will appear in lower-third graphics identifying each contestant, as well as interstitials throughout the show.
While the Project Runway Facebook page has nearly 1 million fans, “Twitter seemed like the best choice to us for a season-long, real-time voting contest to help drive tune-in,” explains Evan Silverman, SVP of digital media for A+E Networks. A+E is using Mass Relevance to tally the hashtag votes, which will be displayed in real-time on MyLifetime.com.
While the Twitter votes won’t impact the judges’ decision to boot a designer off the show, the Fan Favorite designer will win a $10,000 cash prize. Plus, “we have structured the Fan Favorite such that even a designer who doesn’t make it to Fashion Week is still eligible to win if he or she is the audience’s top choice,” Silverman tells Lost Remote.
“We’ve been spending a lot of time recently trying to understand the relationship between social media conversation and television ratings,” Silverman explains. “Although it is difficult to draw an exact ratings correlation, there is no doubt that driving engagement around our shows helps generate buzz, awareness and visibility. Project Runway fans are extremely passionate users of social media – and even more passionate about expressing their allegiance to their favorite designers – so it’s natural to leverage that force with Fan Favorite and provide one more reason for them to interact with Lifetime’s top reality show.”
The 9th season of Project Runway premieres at 9/8 Central on Thursday.
