MTV Shuga - Alone Together - Case Study
What is MTV Shuga: Alone Together?
MTV Shuga: Alone Together is a pan-African web series created in response to the COVID19 pandemic. It’s a spin-off from MTV Shuga - a multiplatform edutainment and behaviour-change campaign using pop culture, trending music, and youthful storytelling.
In April 2020 MTV Shuga: Alone Together premiered the first of 70 scripted episodes. Filmed during lockdown in Kenya, Côte D'Ivoire, Nigeria, South Africa, Botswana, and the United States - the episodes streamed daily across YouTube, Facebook Watch and IGTV.
The purpose of the campaign was to reinforce crucial behaviour change messages contributing to the global fight to flatten the COVID-19 curve as well as remind people who may feel isolated that they are not truly alone.
What Hypebrid did:
Hypebrid was brought in to strategise, advise and lead on key areas of this fast-moving campaign. The nature of the campaign and the short lead time required an iterative approach whilst the series was being produced and broadcast.
The key objective was views in four key territories (Kenya, Nigeria, South Africa and Côte D'Ivoire). Secondary objectives were engagement, returning visitors, and driving conversation around the series themes.
Whilst the MTV Shuga team sourced a Pan-African agency to execute the paid ad and PR campaign, Hypebrid got to work on the initial digital ad spend.
Digital Ad Spend
In the first week we achieved:
“Instagram:
866,319 Impressions
3,022 Link Clicks
263,223 3 Second Views
$0.13 CPC
0.88% CTR
69% Sound On rate”
“Twitter:
206,972 Impressions
245 Link Clicks
26,287 Video Views
$1.97 CPC
0.13% CTR”
Creative Lead
We took the creative lead on all paid assets (banner, YouTube, Twitter, Facebook, audio) and advised the production team on how to adapt the series for a digital audience. For example, shortening the episode introduction had a measurable effect on watch time.
The creatives performed highly, with the display ads delivering x10 more clicks than average.
14% over Facebook Watch benchmark in terms of watch time.
Organic Content Strategy and Theory of Change
Hypebrid advised the MTV Shuga team on the organic content strategy for both social media and the website. This content strategy supported the Theory of Change which we developed (a tool used to define long-term goals for social change, and map backwards to identify necessary preconditions).
One such approach included Instagram story polling to monitor the audience’s awareness of messaging, as well as their engagement and investment in the character journeys.
Relationship Management
Hypebrid worked with Facebook and Upswell to create a specific Facebook Watch campaign using Facebook ad credits. The results were impressive:
“3 million minutes of Facebook Watch views
5.8 million views
7.9% returning viewers
Cost per view $0.003”
We also helped develop a market research and impact survey with Capulet to monitor the impact of the campaign. A key takeaway from the findings being:
89% of viewers identified a learning on the show about the virus.
Overall
This was a really successful campaign, particularly in reaching our primary objective of views. MTV Shuga: Alone Together totalled:
“9 million views
+70k social followers”
It also saw some great, positive engagement from both new and existing fans of the brand.
Learnings
This was a multi-platform campaign across several regions. More lead time would have allowed for further variation of strategies across each platform and region to capitalise further on the results.
Another consideration would have been testing the microsite against a platform such as Linktree to keep users within their current platform.
This was a great project to be a part of and gave us valuable insight into multi-territory and multi-partner campaigns.
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