The 2021 MTV Movie & TV Awards marked the return of in-person award shows for us, as well as our first ever Unscripted awards - a celebration of all things reality tv - and we wanted to do something epic on our social feeds to mark the occasion. By building out two large scale custom video booths, both themed around the individual shows, we created engaging and beautiful video vignettes for our social platforms.
With our partners at Good Co, we created two custom builds to serve as the interactive sets and backdrops for our video booths. For Movie and TV Awards, we wanted to tap in to the desire and excitement about returning to movie theaters safely. We designed an original concessions stand reminiscent of the 90s mall movie theaters of our childhoods, complete with buckets of (golden!) popcorn. For Unscripted: MTVAs, we wanted to highlight the surrealism of modern reality TV by emphasizing the camera itself. A mountain of analog television sets played back live footage of the talent in the booth next to iconic design moments from the MTV vaults.
Over two consecutive nights, we created 30 individual assets that lead to 111 social posts across our owned platforms. Shot and edited in 9x16, with total run times of less than :15 and layed with custom licensed music tracks, the assets were created specifically for Instagram Reels based on best practice recommendations from our partners at the platform.
Our 30 individual assets and 111 social posts resulted in 16.9M views and 923K engagements. Instagram Reels drove over 9.5M views (making up 57% of total views) and 477.4K engagements (making up 52% of total engagements).
Our video booth content helped push our MTVAs & Unscripted coverage to the next level - owned social engagement totaled 27.6M, up +287% year over year. Views totaled 335.4M, up +96% year over year, with Instagram specifically making up the highest share of views with 151M and the strongest gains: up +177% year over year.
But more than the numbers, we measure success by the cultural impact. We were thrilled to get both A-List names (like Captain America himself Anthony Mackie) and Instagram faves (like Bretman Rock) in the booths and sharing their assets on their own accounts while touting the creativity of the work.
