THE 14TH ANNUAL SHORTY AWARDS

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From the 13th Annual Shorty Awards

YouTube's Hispanic Heritage Month

Entered in Multicultural Community Engagement

Objectives

Hispanic Heritage Month (HHM) pays tribute to the generations of Hispanic Americans who have positively influenced and enriched our nation and society. YouTube and XX Artists set out to continue to spotlight and elevate Hispanic creators by featuring evergreen content via takeovers throughout Hispanic Heritage Month. Together, YouTube and XX Artists worked to celebrate the diverse contributions of the Hispanic community across creative platforms and an array of verticals, including food, art/multimedia, music & dance, beauty & fashion, and comedy.

Strategy and Execution

YouTube and XX Artists’ strategy was to keep the spirit of Hispanic Heritage Month alive on social using evergreen editorial content. To do this, XX curated content throughout the campaign, driving awareness to Hispanic creators by utilizing existing creator content and optimizing it for social. The teams worked off of creators’ existing content and helped curate all of the editorial creator content into a playlist that lived on the YouTube Spotlight channel. 

Leveraging existing campaigns, formats and initiatives, as well as creating original series for HHM, YouTube and XX Artists developed a robust month-long programming schedule that drove awareness and honored the presence of Hispanic creators.

XX implemented the objective through six formats:

1. You & A’s - XX partnered with Hispanic creators to discuss what it means to be Hispanic in the US and on YouTube, sourcing questions from the community beforehand to make this a truly engaging experience for fans, with multiple touchpoints. On Instagram, Creators introduced themselves and asked the community to submit questions that they answered using the native question sticker. For Twitter, YouTube shared a tweet letting the community know that [Creator] was going to be making a You & A video surrounding mental health and instructed the community to submit questions that the creator answered in a video. 

2. This or That - Creators used interactive polls on Instagram Stories where viewers chose their preference between two options on a certain topic. For instance, two food-related items or two types of dances. With this format, XX highlighted a series of Hispanic creators and their verticals. 

3. Between Cultures - In this series, XX explored the similarities and differences between Hispanic cultures by pairing a first-generation Hispanic creator with a 2nd/3rd generation creator. This format explored the intersectional differences between Hispanic cultures, for example, Mexican and Cuban, with a variety of generational experiences, across all ages and identities, such as racial varieties in the Hispanic and Black diaspora. Further, XX surfaced creators with even broader intersectional identities (LGBTQ+, disabled, etc.). 

Each participating creator filmed themselves answering the questions separately, and XX stitched the assets together to create a cohesive Q&A.  

4. HHM Virtual Dinner - XX sent the creators a series of questions as part of their RSVP and had them respond with videos, pictures, or text for quotes. From there, XX collected their answers and brought them to life on social media in the form of snackable content on Instagram Stories, Twitter, and the Facebook Community Tab.

5. #YouTubeImpact - For the entire month, XX highlighted creators who were making an impact and using YouTube as a way to share their passions with the world. This format included Instagram in-feed posts, along with Twitter and Facebook Community Tab posts.   

6. GIFs/Stickers en Espanol - XX created GIFs themed around LatinX countries, using terms that are agnostic to YouTube (bell notification, subscribe to LatinX, like, follow, comment below) and added in a little flair.

Results

Detailed results placed under confidential information.

Media

Entrant Company / Organization Name

XX Artists, YouTube

Links

Entry Credits