Q&A: Jo Bacon, vice-president of marketing, creative and publicity MTV UK

Marketing Week (MW): How are you using instant marketing techniques?

Jo Bacon (JB): We create an overarching social strategy to work to per campaign that encompasses our use of a number of social platforms. When devising our strategies, we ensure we are listening to our social audience first. Using Snapchat as an example, before we launched our account on the app, we interacted with our fans on social to get a true gauge of its relevancy to Geordie Shore’s target demographic. After a very positive response we knew Snapchat was the right tool to incorporate into our social campaign for series six.

MW: How does trialling Snapchat content fit in with your overall digital strategy?

JB: MTV UK always endeavours to be at the cutting edge of all new innovations, striving to find new ways to target our audience and the addition of Snapchat to the Geordie Shore digital marketing strategy demonstrates that. We try to ensure we have a real relationship with our audience and to keep being relevant to them. We have got to be ahead of their constantly changing social media and digital consumption; we have to be where they are.

MW: How will you use other platforms such as Instagram video or Vine?

JB: Instagram video is a focus for us in the near future. We believe we are the biggest UK TV show on Instagram at the moment and the introduction of video opens up a number of new opportunities. For series six, we’ve used the platform for an #AskJay session with Jay from the cast where fans sent in their Instagram video questions for a direct response from Jay.

We will be looking to use the platform across PR stunts, key show events and also to introduce a new layer of engagement between our fans and our cast. Short form video platforms like Vine and Instagram Video also offer us a great opportunity to upsell to our longer form digital content on our website. This is something we will very much consider for future use.

MW: Is there now an expectation of instant content from brands in order for them to stay fresh in the consumer’s mind?

JB: Definitely, and we are ‘always on’ 24/7 for Geordie Shore. We don’t have a closing time. We are always topical, relevant and keep the conversation with our fans going even when the series is off-air. We work to a four-point social guide in the marketing team that involves content creation and release, topicality, future scenario planning and real time activity.

For each campaign, we ensure that we gather further digital content with our cast. Working with our digital team, we produce masses of additional digital content with the cast to keep fresh content coming through the pipeline all year around. We streamline our content plan by platform after repeatedly evaluating how our fans react to our posts.