As we explored the various platforms that support chatbots, we felt it was important to anchor this campaign on a platform where our audience was already organically talking about the VMAs. Fans are accustomed to participating in hashtag voting on Twitter during the show each year, so it felt like a natural fit to build the chatbot on Twitter to capitalize on the high engagement levels we see there.
Next, we set out to bring the Best New Artist chatbot to life by creating a conversational “voice” that unified both the MTV & Taco Bell brands. We achieved this using a mix of copy, photos, GIFs and video which added texture to the look and feel of the bot experience.
Our fans are always excited to get their votes in for the VMAs, so it was important for us to build in verifiable voting capabilities to give them an additional opportunity to support their favorite artists. We incentivized our audience to participate by giving them an extra vote (votes on MTV.com are capped to 1 vote per category each day), and took it a step further by rewarding them with exclusive thank you videos that were shot with each nominated artist. These videos are still being shared across the platform to this day — months after the campaign’s conclusion!
And since Best New Artist was the only category to stay open until the day of the show, engaging with our Twitter bot was the only way fans could get in those last-minute votes. The initiative ran from August 18th – 27th, 2017 for a total of nine days. It was amplified using promoted Twitter Direct Message cards to reach our audience in their timelines, and get them to slide into our DMs where they could engage with the bot experience.
Shortly before broadcast on August 27th, we retargeted all chatbot participants with a Twitter push notification to build excitement and create a sense of urgency to watch the show, live on MTV. We told fans to watch our Red Carpet Pre-Show where we revealed the top two finalists for Best New Artist and moved into the final stage of voting: a hashtag battle on Twitter.