NOVA TV became the most watched channel in the 18-49 segment, holding a share of 22.90% of the market. NOVA TV became the most watched channel in the 18-49 segment, holding a share of 22.90% of the market.NOVA TV became the most watched channel in the 18-49 segment, holding a share of 22.90% of the market.
Masked Singer
Backgrounds
End of summer 2019 one of the leading broadcasters in Bulgaria NOVA decided to embark on a thrilling journey and launch the first season of a brand-new reality singing competition called The Masked Singer. The show had just been released in only three other countries around the world and proved to be a ratings phenomenon with 16 celebrities singing hidden behind majestic masks.
The challenge?
Communicate everything, knowing nothing
Visuals
Brief
We had only a week to develop the communication strategy As a precedent, the producers in Bulgaria chose to air the show live each week on SATURDAY, instead of pre-tapped, as it is in other countries.
At first, we did not get any access to the masks, key visuals, logos, backstage footage and still had to build hype and promote a totally new show, unknown to the general audience in Bulgaria.
Execution
BTL, ATL, Digital, PR? We did everything. And we were the first brand to have a TikTok account in Bulgaria.
In addition to special events for journalists where they were blindfolded and taken to a secret venue to meet the producers, we did social media, owned channels like NOVA Play and produced gifs on Giphy for people to use on their channels.
The jewel in the crown
For TikTok we negotiated limited access to the masked celebrities, without revealing to us or anyone else their identity. We had brief snippets of time with each contestant, less than 5 minutes per mask, moments prior to them getting on stage to perform.
We also did
Weekly
“Favourite mask” survey on NOVA’s website;
Detective of the week - we selected the most creative guesses on social media and had them appear on live TV and win exclusive concert invitations;
Facebook and Instagram giveaways (“take a picture while watching the show for a chance to win...”)
Invited key influencers and had them organize ticket giveaways on their channels;
Daily
Fun and original photo and video memes, thus established a “Masked Singer” culture;
Published gifs on Giphy and regularly reminding users to use them in their day-to-day communication;
Created a Spotify Brand Playlist containing all the songs from the contest
Live
We were “covering” all happenings live during the show to engage users.
The Results?
NOVA TV became the most-watched channel in the 18-49 segment, holding a share of 22.90% of the market (Nielsen, Oct 19).
The Masked Singer came up as the most watched show on NOVA, outperforming even the Evening News, the National Lottery, the Stolen Life medical drama. The show had a 10.72% with a share of 26.04% (Nielsen, Oct 19, 4+ audience).
NOVA outperformed its main competitor bTV with a 31.6% market share during the Masked Singer finale (Nielsen, 07.12.19, TG: 18-49).
TikTok
Overnight the account’s followers organically grew from 0 to over 10 000 followers and by the end of season it tripled. We did not do any paid promotions on TikTok. For the span of the season we curated and uploaded over 50 videos that got over 320k likes and almost 1.5 million views each month.
Giphy
We did not do any paid promotions on TikTok. For the span of the season we curated and uploaded over 50 videos that got over 320k likes and almost 1.5 million views each month.
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