Season 9 of Lifetime’s Project Runway finished last week, and winner Anya Ayoung-Chee is already on her way to a successful career. A+E Networks, which owns Lifetime, went out of its way to create a social TV strategy that would allow fans to connect one-on-one with the brand even when the show wasn’t airing. Lost Remote spoke with SVP of Digital Media, Evan Silverman about the different social TV successes the show had this past season, which he explains, all the major social TV data companies agree on:
Lost Remote: What are the social TV results from this season?
Evan Silverman: We’re extremely pleased with the success of Fan Favorite. We looked at data from social TV measurement companies and Project Runway ranked as the most engaging cable TV series in the social media landscape since the season premiered in late July. The season-long awareness Fan Favorite generated no doubt helped Project Runway: Season 9 remain the #1 reality competition series on cable in key demos such as W18+ and W25-54.
LR: How were the results calculated?
ES: Project Runway’s social activity was near or at the top of the competitive marketplace since the season premiere on Thursday, July 28. Among the sources we consulted to determine this info were:
• SocialGuide showed Project Runway: Season 9 was the most engaging cable TV series in the social media landscape, averaging 4.9 comments per unique user, more than the ratio for any other cable TV series during this timeframe (7/28-10/27).
• Bluefin Labs ranked Project Runway: Season 9 social activity in the top 3 of all Thursday night primetime programs in ad-supported cable (7/28-9/29).
o The season premiere on July 28 ranked #1 for the night in social TV, beating all cable and broadcasting programming.
• According to Trendrr.TV, Project Runway: Season 9 generated over 2.3 million pieces of social activity. Interestingly, Trendrr noted that 72% of all activity occurs Friday-Wednesday, with 28% of conversation occurring on Thursday, the day each episode premieres. Also of note, 87% of Thursday activity comes via Twitter.
• Klout ranked Project Runway: Season 9 #2 on the Top 10 Most Influential TV Shows (here) and the #1 most influential designer during Fashion Week (here).
LR: What do these results mean for next season?
ES: Fans reacted well to getting the chance to reward their favorite designer with a $10,000 cash prize so we’d love to bring back Fan Favorite next season. We’ll fine tune the voting process and look for more ways to make it as open, scalable and easy for all fans to vote as possible across multiple social media platforms.
LR: Which social channel was most important?
ES: Fan Favorite leveraged Twitter as the primary social media platform for voting, and clearly the open nature and size of Twitter paid dividends. Equally important to the success of Fan Favorite was the integrated approach that Lifetime took. From Digital, to Programming, to Marketing, to even the show’s production company, Bunim-Murray, we worked the Fan Favorite concept into our content, on-air graphics, interstitials, promotions, social media posting. It truly was a company-wide embrace of the concept.
LR: How was the social voting platform successfully leveraged?
ES: We created a hashtag for every designer (e.g. #PR9anthonyryan, #PR9anya, etc.) and worked with Mass Relevance to aggregate the tweets and tally the votes. The process was seamless and worked well. After episode four, voting for Fan Favorite increased every week through the final week (episode 13), with the final week seeing more than double the votes cast the preceding week. Adam Lambert and his 1.2 million Twitter followers even got in on the action on Tuesday when he asked his followers to vote for #PR9anthonyryan.
LR: Anything else?
There’s a ton of buzz in the social TV space about the latest and greatest technology, but sometimes the results don’t match the press. Pairing an iconic reality show like Project Runway with a social media plan that leverages the strengths of a media company like A+E Networks, and you end up with results worthy of the buzz.
