Best Social Community Winner: KickApps/Ovation TV
publication date: Sep 3, 2009
Creative: www.ovationtv.com http://ovationtv.com/community/ About Ovation TV With a mission to “help people live a more artful life,” Ovation TV is a daily mash-up of art and contemporary culture. Since its re-launch to a national audience in 2007, it has built a subscriber base approaching 30 million. Ovation TV uses groundbreaking partnerships with cultural institutions and art education organizations to supplement its existing programming with high-caliber, locally relevant content. Executive Summary Ovation TV, the only multi-platform network devoted to art and contemporary culture, partnered with KickApps to power its new online community for viewers in 2008, with the goal of allowing people who love art to participate with the brand. Members have uploaded more than 80,000 works of art, a place where members can not only share their creative endeavors, but also form interest groups, join discussions, start blogs, vote on programming, chat live and upload images, video and audio. The KickApps-driven online community allowed OvationTV.com to fulfill an important part of the networks overall mission, facilitating deeper levels of audience engagement with the Ovation TV brand. As a result, in less than a year, Ovation TV’s online traffic shot up by 145 percent, page views jumped 311 percent, and the average time spent by users on the site quadrupled. Solution Ovation TV unveiled its community site in May of 2008, within just three short weeks of engaging with KickApps. The site’s features, which include media uploads, blogs and in-depth discussions, promote the exchange of art and ideas generated by community members. The community website enables Ovation TV’s audience to interact with the brand on a daily basis. Major figures such as choreographer Mark Morris and Chicago’s History Museum have taken turns at “curating” the community’s front page. The homepage curator role was also awarded to one young artist who won a “My Art” competition via popular vote within the community. Results The Ovation TV team has built a loyal membership of more than 7,900 (and growing) art lovers, in under a year. After launching its KickApps-driven site, online traffic was up 145 percent, page views jumped 311 percent, and the average time spent by users on the site quadrupled. Within Ovation TV, the addition of the KickApps-powered community has boosted ad inventory, expanded the potential for direct sales, and enhanced the channel’s affiliate sales proposition. The benefits also extend to advertisers: Geico, for example, is sponsoring an online group inviting community members to create “15-minute masterpieces,” a tie-in with the insurer’s ad campaign. The sponsorship is a much stronger and better way to interact with the advertiser’s brand. It’s a great way to connect advertisers with viewers and members. The widgets in the community make it easy to pass assets created on Ovation TV’s social network back to advertisers for their own sites.  Activity on the site has generated both content and promotional opportunities for the channel. One Ovation TV-authored blog post about self-published books inspired a collective of members to plan their own publication: a book of art drawn from the community. Members voted in a “Battle of The Nutcrackers,” determining which version of the classic story would air on Christmas Eve in 2008. Following the community’s “My Art” contest, a Time Warner Cable owned store in the winner’s hometown area will host a show of her work. In April 2009, the Ovation TV audience chatted live with director Danny Lee online as his documentary, Rock Fresh. This kind of activity turns the audience into active members of the community. Going forward, Ovation TV plans to use KickApps to offer casual games with an art theme, and to explore the possibility of a collaborative space where members can create work online that would then be promoted by the channel on-air. |
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