(09.07.2012)
O Music Awards Score an Offline Win
A popular Internet maxim is that no one watches longform video. So what do you do if you want people to watch 24 hours of it?
If you’re MTV, you bring in an established band with a loyal following and you blend the old (music television) with the new (reality television).
This is precisely what MTV tried to do with the latest installment of its O Music Awards.
For the third time (in 3 O Music Awards), the prize was given to the “Aliens,” fans of German pop-rock band Tokio Hotel. The legions of Tokio Hotel fans beat out fans of artists with similarly rabid followings such as One Direction and Super Junior.
An informal look at the statistics suggests that maybe it’s not the Flaming Lips that’s driving the success of this event at all. Viacom told me that at its peak, the O Music Awards website was receiving 36,000 pageviews per second, all of which was driven by voting and excitement over three key awards categories: “Fan Army FTW,” “Must Follow on Twitter,” and “OMA Superfan Rundown.” These categories have nothing to do with music, but honor the fans behind the artist.
When Viacom looks at the stats and deems this event a success (and it was), they’ll look at the 44 million votes they received, the 1.2 million streams, and the traffic bonanza that comes from the global audience. This is huge for the growth of the O Music Awards. However, those “Aliens” will go vote for Tokio Hotel wherever – no matter what.
– full article
