Objectives

Univision's top-rated reality competition "Nuestra Belleza Latina" ("Our Latin Beauty"/NBL) concluded its eighth season with a grand finale that dominated all social media platforms. The show was one of the TV Season's top shows on Twitter, taking home the record for engagement -- each fan sending an average 8.3 tweets around each airing, according to Nielsen Social. NBL was also THE FIRST TV show, regardless of language, to top the Facebook U.S. weekly buzz rankings, according to Facebook. Additionally, as compared with previous season, the show delivered 8.4 times more tweets per average episode and had higher engagement per episode than "The Bachelor," "Dancing with the Stars," and "American Idol." On Facebook, NBL garnered 5.5 times more engagement during average episode than the previous season. The show gave viewers the power of voting through Twitter and facebook as well as unfettered access to behind-the-scenes moments, contestant vine confessionals and Q&A sessions on Facebook. These accomplishments were chronicled in such major publications as the Wall Street Journal and AdWeek.

Strategy and Execution

Nuestra Belleza Latina (NBL) is an exemplar of successful social media strategy for a television show. The objective of Univision's social media strategy was to drive buzz and augment viewership by encouraging fan interaction across platforms like Facebook, Twitter, Vine and Instagram. The show's 2014 season was its most popular ever, and NBL's presence on various social media platforms saw huge success and was lauded by many trade publications.

In addition to securing the no. 1 position on Facebook's U.S. Weekly Buzz rankings and Twitter TV season's Top Shows, the show garnered other successes.

• On Facebook, posts about the finale garnered 68 million impressions (Source: Facebook).
• Facebook average weekly reach was 5.8M with 418% growth vs. previous year. (Source: Facebook).
• Two times the average live social TV engagement on Twitter than English-language reality shows such Dancing with stars and American Idol. (Source: Nielsen).
• The NBL finale was the No. 1 broadcast show of the day in terms of engagement, with 16.3 Tweets/Unique Author. (Source: Nielsen).
• The show's Twitter account was the No. 1 TV series Twitter account of the Day in terms of total mentions on Twitter garnering more mentions than "Game of Thrones" and "Mad Men" day of the finale (Source: Nielsen).
• The fans interacted with the show like never before, right from the get-go. Kicking off with a pre-show premiere social media campaign "Soy bella, firmo aquí con mi #NBLSelfie" (I'm beautiful, signing here with my #NBLSelfie) that encouraged fans and potential contestants to submit selfies on Instagram and Twitter. Four teams were created and led by past NBL Queens prior to the season premiere that ended with the winning fans' selfies appearing on the show's first gala. The initiative resulted in over 15,000 submissions across Instagram and Twitter.

Throughout the season, key social media activities allowed fans to follow the contestants every step of the way in their NBL journey.

• Social voting: Episode after episode fans were able to vote for their favored contestant on Twitter and through a connected app on Facebook.
• Facebook Chats: Fans interacted in real-time with their favorite contestant every week
• Vine Confessionals: Fans watched firsthand the contestants' reactions to the judges' evaluation or behind the scenes activities.

All of this interaction and fan engagement led to the show topping Facebook's buzz rankings, making NBL the first television series in any language to reach #1. Of this milestone, AdWeek's Lost Remote blog wrote: "We are a month into the eighth season of 'Nuestra Belleza Latina' – Univision's hit reality beauty competition show – and the impressive ratings continue to make Univision a top 10 network among the important adults 18-34 and 18-49 demographics. On the social TV front, Nuestra Belleza Latina set a milestone, becoming the first TV show (in English and Spanish) to top Facebook's weekly buzz rankings."

Nuestra Belleza Latina also saw enormous success on Twitter, according to an infographic from Nielsen, the most tweets per unique user from September 2013 through May 2014. Of this, the Wall Street Journal said, "Univision's 'Nuestra Belleza Latina,' a reality show built around beauty contestants, had the most vocal fans on Twitter, with each sending an average 8.3 tweets per airing," while Twitter said the show "took home the record for the most engaged fans throughout the season." Fans' engagement was further demonstrated in their reaction to NBL's call for votes, which was retweeted more than 2,100 times.

Media