On the heels of The Real Housewives of Salt Lake City’s extremely successful series premiere - top 5 unscripted program on cable in 2020 and highest rated Real Housewives launch in nearly five years - Bravo was looking to capitalize and amplify the show’s hype ahead of season two to reach not just existing fans but new audiences and create buzz. The brand turned to Essence and Captiv8 to activate Real Housewives’ superfans to help do just this. Similar to the cast of the show, the nine creators for the campaign were not only allowed, but encouraged to bring out their own personalities for their content in comedic, indulgent and unapologetic ways. The strategy behind the influencer-generated video content was to strike the perfect balance between the creators’ own over-the-top commentary alongside reenactments and reactions of iconic scenes, and/or dueting buzzworthy clips - all while reminding their followers to tune into the show only on Bravo. To further fuel conversation, Captiv8 amplified efforts with paid media and implemented a brand lift study to measure the campaign’s potential impact directly on tune-ins.
One of the biggest challenges facing the entertainment industry is finding a way to break through the crowded landscape. In order for Bravo to see another successful premiere for season 2 of The Real Housewives of Salt Lake City, the teams were going to have to develop a strategy that struck the perfect balance between original, engaging, and impactful enough to reach both new and existing audiences. The best way to do this, meet the audience where they already are - on their phone, on social media, staying up-to-date on their favorite content creators. Now, the challenge came in defining and identifying what the “right” partnership looks like, in a quantifiable way. Given Bravo’s established and loyal following, the teams felt there was no better way to do this than activating fans themselves with followings of their own. To achieve this, Captiv8 utilized its data-backed platform to analyze audience demographics, personality, and affinity search criteria in addition to past posting and brand mentions to find influencers who were organic, established fans of Bravo. Through this data, Bravo approved a talent list that would achieve the strongest audience reach while creating authentic, over-the-top influencer-generated content that fully captured the addictive dramatics of the franchise, and would force key audiences to stop their scrolling and tune into Bravo. With the creative calling for video content, TikTok and Instagram were prioritized. The primary key performance indicators were impressions,engagements and overall reach of the videos.
Between 36 social posts across nine creators, the campaign as a whole resulted in over 10 million impressions, which was nearly 5 percent over the contracted benchmark. Organically, the campaign drove over 700K impressions and nearly 13,000 engagements. TikTok creators like Jake Sachs saw organic engagement rates as high as 12.74% which was +2.07% over his channel’s benchmark and +6.23% over TikTok’s engagement rate benchmark. Through Captiv8’s additional targeted paid amplification, the campaign was able to see 9.7 million paid impressions, nearly 400,000 more engagements, and over 8,000 more link clicks. The campaigns' paid efforts on TikTok also resulted in a 9.24% engagement rate which is nearly 5% over the TikTok paid media entertainment engagement rate benchmark. The sentiment of the engagement was overwhelmingly positive. The campaign resulted in 76% positive comments which was 36% over the pre-established benchmarks. Captiv8 also ran a brand lift study to better understand the campaign’s potential impact on tune-ins. We found a statistically significant, 5% lift in the likelihood of viewers to watch the show and 6% lift in ad recall after being exposed to this influencer campaign versus those who did not see the campaign.
