Harmonic Aftershock

RESULTS: Crowdsourcing a Hawaii Five-0 episode ending.

As a follow-up to my January 6^th post, tonight was Hawaii Five-0’s much hyped “who dunnit?” episode wherein the viewing audience crowdsourced, in real-time, the show’s murder mystery ending by Tweeting one of three possible hashtags representing one of three possible killers and/or voting directly on CBS.com.

Did people participate?
Using Radian6, I pulled all of the mentions of the 3 hashtags, exported the results to Excel and isolated those Tweets during the East Coast and West Coast episode airings' voting period as mentioned by the @HawaiiFive0CBS Twitter account during the broadcast.

Note: These counts represent only votes via Twitter mentions and not any votes on CBS.com.

EAST COAST AIRING

There were a total of about 7,200 Twitter votes during the 40-ish minute East Coast voting period. The vote on Twitter matched which ending aired ("The Boss").

WEST COAST AIRING

There were just over 1,000 votes via Twitter for the West Coast airing. The vote on Twitter did NOT match the ending that aired. "The Student" was the West Coast ending (and received the lowest votes on Twitter) which must mean that it had a substantial number of votes on CBS.com over the others to make up for the disparity.

Did people tune-in?
Of course, CBS did this (very creative) stunt to drive ratings. Did it work? UPATED 1/15: About 9.4 million viewers tuned in to watch Hawaii Five-0 last night. Looking at Nielsen historical data, this is slightly below average ratings for the 2011/2012 season which saw on average 10.7 million viewers on new episodes. But it's higher than the average viewership of the Fall 2012 season so far of 8.9 million viewers.

Not the most Tweeted H50 episode (by far)(but close).
Pulling historical data of Hawaii Five-0 from Bluefin Labs (click image to enlarge), even with all of the hype, press, and publicity, the amount of 24 hour social activity for this episode was average and less than half of the September 24, 2012 broadcast.

Update 1/15 - 9pm: When looking at the social activity (via Bluefin Labs) limited to just the airtime of each episode, the data shows that the amount was very close to that of the 9/24 season premiere (click image to enlarge.)

So in the end, the episode garnered average-ish Nielsen ratings and above average Social TV ratings. Now the unanswered question becomes to what degree did this stunt maintain ratings? Would they have been materially lower had it not been for the buzz leading up to (and during) this episode?

A few other things…
I was expecting to see lower thirds during the broadcast encouraging viewers to vote. There were none other than the standard #H50 hashtag at the very beginning of the episode. However, at the :30 minute commercial break, there was a TV promo spot telling people to vote and showing the different hashtags they could use. This appeared at both the beginning and ending of the commercial pod.

At the end of the episode, there was a quick bumper that mentioned the other endings were now available to watch on CBS.com.

It's debateable if the overall vote count is good or bad -- it's very similar in volume to the numbers I pulled when NBC's The Voice did something kind of similar. But in the end, those who participated seemed to really enjoy it.

And that's just one of many similar Tweets praising CBS for its innovation and willingness to experiment. I'd have to agree ;-)

Trunk Club was designed for me.

Many who know me also know that shopping for clothes literally gives me anxiety.

• I don’t find it particularly fun to hunt around for things.
• I hate feeling “watched” by store clerks when I’m browsing.
• I wouldn’t exactly call myself savvy about brands and styles.

But most of all, I abhor dressing rooms, especially when the attendant asks, “how’s it going in there?” And therefore avoid, at all costs, having to try things on at stores.

Add to that, I feel bad (for whatever reason) about making returns if something doesn’t fit.

Enter Trunk Club.
I first heard about Trunk Club back in the Fall of 2011 when this article popped up in my Google Reader. But it wasn’t until about six months ago when I learned my boss (at the time) used them and then subsequently when another colleague literally sat me down and explained step by step how the process works and his own experiences with it, I reached my tipping point and signed up later that day.

• I was digging the ease of the sign up process.
• I appreciated how an effort was made to really understand my wants/needs.
• A “style consultant” (and cool one at that) immediately followed up.

My First Trunk

Since I live in the heart of Boston and didn’t want the package getting stolen, I had my trunk held at the nearest Fed-Ex and only discovered there was actually a handle on the package after I clumsily carried it home ;-) But as I opened the box, I was psyched to be greeted with a hand written note from Taylor detailing why he picked out for me what he did.

The Experience Was Awesome.

First of all, it was kind of like Christmas – not knowing what was in the box…and that made it actually kind of fun/intriguing. But best of all was being able to take my time to try on the clothes in the privacy of my own home without anyone else around.

I was also really impressed with how the actual order fulfillment works. After I tried everything on, I made two piles: Stuff I wanted to keep and stuff I was going to send back. When I went to trunkclub.com an itemized list (with photos) appeared with everything that was in my trunk and I was able to go through one by one to give feedback on why I was keeping or why I was returning.

And it was simple and efficient – A return label and packing tape was included and it was a mere 2 block walk to drop off the “trunk” back at Fed-Ex (but this time I used the handle ;-)

It’s Constantly Optimizing.
The inherent online feedback process along with the ongoing email conversations Taylor and I have means that he’s constantly getting better at knowing me -- my fit, my style, and my needs.

I never thought I’d say that getting new clothes is actually fun - But, I'll say it. For me, the premium cost of the clothes is very much worth the anxiety I save by being spared from going shopping. Trunk Club clearly knows its target audience – and I’m smack in the middle of it.

2013: The year of social TV storytelling.

In Social TV’s bonus chapter, Stacey and I illustrated the power of content and choice using USA Network Psych’s #HashtagKiller program as an example. And while so much of 2011 and 2012 focused a lot on technology (especially the second screen) in the social TV era of television, we’ve talked a lot recently about a shift back to what TV is really about: storytelling. What USA did with Psych began to give a glimpse of the possibilities. And there are so many more...

This past November, I blogged about the social TV polling trend – enabling viewers to actually affect the course of an on-air program in real-time. Well, CBS just raised the bar announcing that viewers of its Monday, January 14^th Hawaii Five-0 episode can Tweet using one of 3 hashtags while they’re watching to affect the ending of the “murder mystery.” (H/T: The Verge)

According to CBS, "Voting will take place in real time during the broadcasts for both East/Central and Pacific time zones." So what this means is that it's possible that the former timezone may see a different ending than the latter. That's pretty cool.

I personally love the notion of the Twitter backchannel as a means to instantaneously crowdsource television content. But the big questions are how many people will actually participate and will doing this help drive tune-in? I’ll follow up next week with a post that measures the amount of Tweets generated by each of the hashtags.

As an aside, as more TV networks do instant Twitter polls like this, a start-up to watch is Poptip which uses its proprietary algorithm to easily capture and report the results of Twitter polls in real-time. It’s a great time saver to help count the votes (accurately) and it’s great for the people participating as they can see which choice is getting the most votes as the show unfolds.

Online Video: The Power of Choice

This past October I presented at the Inbound Marketing Summit Boston and previously shared the teaser video leading up to that presentation. I was recently sent the link to the video of the actual presentation that I gave and here it is. If you don't want to watch the 30 minute version, you can, instead check out the 3 minute version.

I'm looking forward to doing an updated and adapted version this as the opening keynote at IMS New York City on April 3rd.

See you all in 2013 :-)

Does Twitter expose your homunculus?

We know all too well our inner voice (sometimes referred to as our “homunculus”). It’s that never ending conversation we have with ourselves. Inherently unfiltered, it’s fraught with countless snap judgments that get overridden by our moral compass and therefore never see the light of day.

Or do they?

Twitter’s double-edged sword is that on one hand, it represents the real-time heartbeat of its population. It’s about being in the moment. And for researchers, cultural anthropologists, and all around “data geeks” (like me!), this instant feedback is a goldmine full of interesting insights.

On the other hand, the accessibility and ease of which one can post to Twitter (and Facebook for that matter), is all too tempting for some users to essentially publish their gut reactions – their stream of consciousness – all without a filter.  It’s what leads to the many social media meltdowns that the media seems to love to cover.

And for those who don’t think before they post, they are exposing their homunculus – sharing their inner voice and (often extremely offensive) raw emotions with the general population. Twitter is open, public, and what we publish lasts forever.  

Do we really want everyone to get to know our homunculus? There's a reason we all have an inner voice that was by design and default on mute to the outer world.

Is the future of game shows the second screen?

NBC’s weeklong primetime run of Howie Mandel-hosted game show Take It All reveals what the next iteration of game shows might look like in the social TV era of television.

While second screen companion apps have yet to find scale/mass appeal with television viewing audiences, the game show genre might actually be its sweet spot. Since game shows have been on the air, people have always mentally played along at home. The second screen (in the form of our tablets, smartphones, and laptops) actually let us do that – and with each other. In addition, the demographic that plays social games is also similar to the demographic that watches game shows.

Playing around with NBC's Take It All app last night, I was struck by a few things:

- NBC did a nice job using their investment in Zeebox to integrate the Take It All App as a layer that sits on top of it (versus something separate).

- Similarly, everything from logging in to playing along was in the vein of “lightweight interactions” – the whole experience was seamless and simple.

- The strategy behind the app is smart. The game can only be played while watching the show live (hence an incentive along with the lure of winning $10,000 that could drive ratings).

- It was great to see on-air/in-broadcast promos for the game/Zeebox leveraging Howie Mandel at the end of a commercial break further connecting the dots and emphasizing Take It All as a cross-channel experience.

As for where this could lead? There is a huge opportunity when the show goes to commercial break for the app to be doing something (other than just showing a countdown timer) such as ads that sync to the broadcast commercials helping to reinforce an advertiser's message (and provide lean-forward interaction with the TV spot).

And the holy grail? The biggest opportunity would be to leverage the app/second screen for live game shows (unfortunately this game show is pre-recorded) wherein the viewing audience can actually affect and/or be integrated into the broadcast itself.

Now that would be social TV at its finest.

The many interpretations of “social TV.”

During Boston’s FutureM week, I was on a social TV panel as part of the Inbound Marketing Summit.

The topic of social TV + business-to-business came up throughout – and I wonder if we’re over using the buzzword of “social TV” to describe things that have nothing to do with television. Or is it that the definition of TV is changing?

The Social TV Polling Trend.

On my last post, I illustrated how TV networks are displaying show-level hashtags on-air. But another trend is emerging that harnesses the instant feedback loop of the social TV era of television thanks in large part to Twitter: Social TV Polling – Done in a way that affects the programming of live shows in real-time.

A couple of months ago Big Brother polled its viewing audience using the hashtags #BBpunish and #BBreward asking viewers whether or not the voted off contestant should be punished or rewarded at the end of the show.

And eight minutes into last night’s The Voice live results show, a branded integration from Starbucks, had host Carson Daly asking viewers to choose which treams/song would be performed at the end of the show.

Viewers who Tweeted using #VoiceBestShot were voting for the remaining contestants of Team Christina + Team Blake to perform Pat Benatar’s Hit Me With Your Best Shot.

 

Viewers who Tweeted using #VoiceWantMe were voting for the remaining contestants of Team Adam + Team Celo to perform Cheap Trick’s I Want You To Want Me.

Voting lasted only 15 minutes until the hashtags were counted.

The Results?
I was curious to see just how many people actually participated. Using Radian6, I pulled the following volumes of each showing a total of 15,203 Tweet votes generated.

And indeed, towards the end of the show last night, Hit Me With Your Best Shot was performed by Team Christina + Team Blake.

So What’s in it for TV networks?
It was a very strategic and planned move, by doing this early into the show. NBC was trying to spark trending topics on Twitter in order to drive tune-in which is a correlation that research firms are trying to prove.

Expect to see lots more of this happening as Twitter + TV integrations evolve from a single passive hashtag to a strategy that leverages TV viewers feedback in real-time to affect on-air programming.

Hashtags are now everywhere on TV.

Twitter hashtags have been popping up in the lower thirds of TV shows’ on-air broadcasts now for about two years. But this Fall season, they’ve become a standard include in television networks on-air graphics packages and have gained even more prominence on-screen.

Here’s a look at the latest usage of hashtags across a few networks and shows.

The Persistent Standalone

ABC is sporting some pretty bold/translucent hastags in the lower left of the screen that persistent fairly strongly through the duration of the given show's episode. The hashtag inlcudes the network name (ABC), as part of it and is designed in a simlar graphical style as the ABC network bug which appears on the opposite side of the screen. The hashtag is written out in title case.

The Logo Lockup

FOX's The Xfactor maintains a persistent hashtag but is displayed as a network logo lock up bug (and in all lowercase).

The Conversational

Glee has been incorporating hashtags for a while and a few months ago I blogged about their use of multiple hashtags that appeared during buzzworthy moments of the show. The standard #Glee hashtag usually appears above the network bug but lately it's been a bit more conversational based on when the show returns from hiatus or a new season as in the example above #gleeisback - all lowercase.

The Animated

CNN heavily promotes the hashtags of many of its shows and in this example it appears with motion/animation but also as a persistent hashtag below the animation and promoted dynamically throughout the show in the main lower-third area. It appears both as title case and all upper case.

The Climactic

Show's like PBS's Nova and NBC's The Voice display show hashtags at "crescendo" moments during on-air broadcasts where there's a high propensity for Twitter backchannel discussion. #novascinow is in all lowercase and #TheVoice is in title case.

There's no 1 right way to do it.

In the end, Networks and shows continue to experiment with the best way to spark conversation about thier shows using Twitter hashtags. The goal, of course, is to hopefully trend on Twitter to drive greater tune-in. And while there isn't consistency in display usage across television networks, you can bet we'll continue to see even more hashtags appear in programming.

Sometimes great content loses.

I’ve been on a pretty major content kick lately. From feeling that social media is really about content to all too often saying you can’t make a viral video (what you can make is great content). And “It all comes back to content” is the punch line of Social TV (my book). Well, great content by itself just isn’t enough.

Today USA Network announced that they wouldn’t be renewing Political Animals. A series that I likened to ABC’s ill-fated Commander In Chief from 2005. Both series featured strong female characters each played by equally strong female stars (Sigourney Weaver and Geena Davis, respectively). It was unfortunate in 2006 when Commander In Chief was cancelled after receiving a bunch of awards including a Golden Globe.

Political Animals never really had a chance to get off the ground. And although it was IMHO awesome content, television’s report card (Nielsen ratings) said otherwise. But there have been many examples in TV’s seven decade history where shows took a while to gain momentum – Seinfeld anyone? And it was the original Star Trek that became popular once its cancelled series found syndication.