Lauren Reid // Digital Producer & Content Strategist

The sixth annual VH1 Trailblazer Honors celebrated today’s most respected politicians, entertainers and activists who have dedicated their time and commitments to the women’s movement and beyond. It was a night of moving speeches and tributes celebrating International Women’s Day from the Wilshire Ebell Theater in Los Angeles.

In a climate used to live events and a quick turnaround, we had a unique challenge with this show — a bridge period between taping and broadcast!

That 2+ week bridge period between taping and air that provided us an opportunity to roll out a variety of content across platforms, creating awareness around the show in the leadup, which led to a +40% YoY growth in cross-platform streams and +27% YoY growth in engagements.

Empowering moments between the female cast members of top VH1 shows showing each other support when they needed it the most, stitched together into one supercut, plus broken out individually into specific show cuts.

+ 1 entire supercut

+ 3 Individual per-franchise cuts for specific show pages: Love & Hip Hop, Black Ink Crew, Basketball Wives

We spoke to the VH1 talent our audience knows and loves about the women they admire, their inspirations, and how it is to work in a male-dominated space. Video was shared across social platforms and O&O.

+ 1 Talent-Specific profile on being a female in the tattoo industry (Black Ink Crew: Chicago)

+ 4 Thematic Supercuts: Drag Inspirations, Trailblazing Divas, Trailblazing VH1 Women, Trailblazing Women In Music

+ This Channel Talent related content did particularly well over other content, especially on Facebook: 2 pieces broke 200k views, and one broke 100k.

We cut bonus content from Show Production’s package interviews:

+ 3 Terry Crews packages: Sharing his #MeToo Story, Hopes For the Future, On Honoree Tarana Burke (each since expired)

+ 2 Storm Reid packages: On Using Your Voice, On Cardi B

We released 7 sneak peeks across O&O and social platforms (Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Instagram Stories, YouTube, and YouTube Stories) to tease out top show moments and push tune-in to broadcast.

Love & Hip Hop: Hollywood’s Bridget Kelly spoke to celebrities on the carpet about how the women they look up to, their hopes for future generations of women, and more.

+ 3 talent-specific packages: Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Peppermint, Alyssa Milano

+ 2 Supercuts: Dreams for the Future, Personal Trailblazers

We partnered with celebrity photographer Ramona Rosales to capture portraits with talent at the show to roll out across our accounts and provide talent an asset to post. Select portraits were even used within the broadcast open. The portraits’ tone reflected the strength, empowerment, and inspiration that lived within each of our subjects

+ Collection of all portraits: http://www.vh1.com/photos/ywqz0b/

In a two package series, professional troublemaker and influencer Luvvie Ajayi guided us through her own experiences in making change in society, and her top 10 ways to be a trailblazer.

+ Sponsored by Hersheys/IceBreakers

Highlights from the show were distributed on our O&O and across off platform players (Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, IGTV, YouTube) from VH1 brand accounts after they appeared in broadcast.

+ 2 performances, 2 honoree packages, 3 acceptances, and 1 presenter moment

We live tweeted the show as it aired. Overall sentiment was positive.