MBC didn’t have any strategies to promote Arabs Got Talent (AGT) online when it launched in 2011. In fact, the show only started its digital presence midway through the season, says Fouad Masoud, MBC’s social media manager. “When we started the first season of the show, we didn’t have any clear plan for promoting it on social media,” he says.
Social media was already enjoying some fame during the debut of the show, due to the Arab Spring. Therefore, the network decided to draw on that by creating pages for MBC’s entertainment platforms, and the first page created was AGT.
“The show was met with high acclaim, because the audience related it with the Arab Spring; our people had talents and also the courage to take to the streets and demand change,” says Masoud.
He explains that social media activation back then was still new to the region and the network stuck to the basic strategies, such as pushing content (press releases and editorial) on social media. “It was mainly a one-way discussion then, whatever content we had available we would upload it online.”
However, as the show began to garner unprecedented success on social media among MBC platforms, the group started rethinking its approach. The communication became “two way” – the plan focused on inviting interaction between social media followers. For example, Masoud explains, in response to a fan’s comment on Facebook that AGT’s lighting gives an illusion of the Star of David, MBC decided to change the entire lighting system for the show.
“AGT is currently the biggest Facebook page within MBC pages on the platform,” says Masoud. He adds that, recently, the show’s Facebook page crossed the five million mark. It also grew one million fans in approximately one month and a half since AGT Season Three (S3) launched, which was the growth rate achieved by both Arab Idol and The Voice during an entire season.
As for Twitter, Masoud tells Communicate that, so far, the average episodic mentions for the current season is 120,000, while for Season Two it was 8,000 and 68,000 for Season One.
For every episode, the hashtag #ArabsGotTalent was trending in Saudi Arabia. AGT S3 has also performed stronger than Arab Idol Season Two did on MBC.net, attracting 12.3 million page views, whereas Arab Idol Season Two had 10.2 million. The show is also leading in media plays, with 5.7 million on Shahid.net, while Arab Idol Season Two has achieved little more than three million.
Given the exponential growth of online video in the region, it’s no surprise that AGT’s YouTube channel is performing well, with contestants’ auditions receiving the most views. The most watched – for the MBC group as well as in the MENA region via YouTube stats – is Hala Al Turk’s audition from Season One, with 44,783,590 views. Entire episodes of AGT can also be seen on Shahid.net.
Additionally, even though photo-sharing platform Instagram is yet to pick up the same momentum that other social networks enjoy in the Arab world, AGT launched an account that currently has 39,000 followers.
These numbers have not gone unnoticed by advertisers, says Masoud, who factors in different levels of popularity of shows on social networks. “Marketers associate high numbers on social media with advertising success, even though this is not always right,” he says.
