December 12, 2011 •mattd
So the X-Factor juggernaut reached its conclusion last night, after two gruelling hours that could probably have been condensed into ten minutes (but where’s the money in that? :-)) girl band Little Mix were announced as the winners, beating Liverpudlian Marcus Collins by gaining 48% of the vote to his 42%.
For me in particular, it was really interesting to see how the artists, the programme and even the venue (Wembley Arena) promoted themselves and the event through their respective Social Media channels.
For those of a betting nature, a great indication of the final result could be seen on Facebook, as Little Mix (with 150,000) had nearly 1/3 more Facebook fans than Marcus (around 100,000). But then the shrewd amongst you would probably have checked Twitter as well, which could have thrown your gambling plans into disarray as Marcus had nearly half a million Twitter followers, tens of thousands more than Little Mix!
This difference is certainly interesting to me, it could well mean that Facebook attracts an overall younger audience than Twitter, with Marcus being slightly older and therefore attracting a different demographic than the four girls. Or it could be down to Marcus being regularly re-tweeted by mentor Gary Barlow, who has nearly 1million followers himself…
Little Mix were also busy with the hashtags, particularly #littlemixers – which is how they refer to their fans and has been prompting a flurry of activity throughout the final.
X-Factor themselves were also working overtime on their Facebook page, which has an incredible four million fans (give or take a couple), and in terms of promoting the ‘Cannonball’ single (#cannonball) they have an incredibly engaged audience to market to – they probably don’t even need to do any traditional advertising such is the way that this is all working for them, along with TV and radio appearances from the band themselves.
However they were bang on the ball – within seconds of Little Mix being announced as the winners their Facebook page had a new Landing Page advertising the single, as did the X-Factor page, and perhaps a little harshly, Marcus’ page too! All three landing pages were click-able and linking directly to the single download on iTunes. Nice.
A couple of minutes later and Wembley Arena were in on the act, congratulating Little Mix, commiserating with Marcus, whilst linking to both of their Facebook pages within the update.
Coldplay weren’t messing around either, providing a link to a YouTube live video of their track Charlie Brown on their Facebook and Twitter profiles just minutes after performing the song live to 16million people watching at home…
Both Little Mix and Marcus have been tweeting and updating all day from various studios across the country.
It’s ten years since Will Young beat Gareth Gates to win the first Pop Idol, and blimey it’s all come a long way since then – but the way that Social Media has been not only embraced but used so powerfully in this year’s competition surely underlines that it’s where your fans are – not just if you’re a pop star in the making but whatever your line of work. It’s surely the future of marketing and advertising and I think that this goes some way to proving it.