Love Island: inside ITV’s social media strategy
When your show sells thousands of branded water bottles, it has to be doing something right. For 2018, the broadcaster’s social media team are being pragmatic about the platforms they’re using to interact with viewers; decoupling from Snapchat to crack on with Instagram Stories instead.
ITV senior digital producers Kenny England said he believed ITV 2’s Snapchat issue weren’t due to a sudden decline in interest of Love Island, but that the dip was platform-specific, and in part due to the app’s poorly-received redesign.
In the first month alone Love Island’s official account has “nearly doubled” its Instagram audience. The page has been using Instagram’s Stories product to direct fans to quizzes, divulge teaser soundbites and share its popular ‘The First Look’ video, which gives viewers a two-minute daily preview of the upcoming episode.
While it is pulling away from Snapchat, the show is still investing a lot of resource in Twitter, which England said gives fans a platform to discuss the show, especially its “watercooler moments” in real-time.
“Love Island has become so important to Twitter that the company took out a cover-wrap of the Metro on the day of the first episode, just to remind people to use it while watching the show,” he added.
Of the platforms Series Four is using, England described Instagram as the ‘perfect‘ one. The visual tone of it, he noted, matches the show’s own attention to visual perfection, which affects everything from set backdrops to the contestants themselves.
The partnerships too have expanded from those with [main sponsor] Superdrug and Ministry of Sound that ran during Series Three, to 10 partners for Series Four, including Missguided and Domino’s.
This expansion is allowing Love Island’s team to achieve more for their audiences, and for commercial partners to explore new engagement avenues. It could lead to larger audiences, and a few more accolades along the way.
Source: https://www.thedrum.com/news/2018/07/03/inside-love-islands-social-media-strategy-why-itv-has-abandoned-snapchat-instagram