The Black List Wins NAACP Image Award

Congratulations to our friends at The Black List for winning the 40th NAACP Image Award for Best Documentary last night. The Black List aired on HBO and its website (www.whosonyourblacklist.com) features a user-generated video contest calling on viewers to share their story. The videos were voted on by viewers and a panel of judges.

Four winners have been selected and their videos will be showcased this year on various HBO platforms. The winners also had their portraits taken by photographer Timothy Greenfield-Sanders (check out the portraits!) and were interviewed by acclaimed journalist Elvis Mitchell. The four winners are: NINAYVETTE: To Speak Or Not To Speak Like A, blackwomyn: hairstory, mychalsmith: Celebrating Mediocrity and ctownsgreatest: A View of a Black 19 Year Old Mind.

The website and video contest is a great example of integrating a social experience with editorial content to extend the experience across mediums and to drive engagement. More so, it’s an excellent example of the way social media is helping brands to foster deeper relationships with customers, grow their audience and create new revenue opportunities.

By wrapping an interactive and social experience around the documentary, HBO and the producers of the documentary have been able to extend the life and significance of the movie well beyond the actual broadcast. Through the contest, the audience has an opportunity to participate in a conversation that HBO hosts which in turn drives a deeper affinity to HBO and The Black List, more traffic to HBO.com, potential DVD sales and a following for The Black List II which will air this year on HBO. You can bet that those winners and entrants told all their friends and family about the movie and the contest.

To expand on this, the producers of The Black List created OneMillionStories.org as a destination that will continue to build on the movie and the brand.

This is perfect example of how to grow an audience, turn it into a community and create perpetual campaigns that roll from one promotion to another, keeping one’s audience engaged.

Again, congratulations to the producers of The Black List and HBO. We’re honored to play a small part in this great achievement.

OK, So Who Saw Coldplay & Jay-Z At The Grammys Last Night?

Last night’s 51st Grammy Awards had everything you’d expect–fun performances and not too many surprises when it came to winners. It felt like it had been awhile since I watched the Grammys or at least enjoyed it but last night’s show seemed fresh. What did you think?

It’s not news that the music industry continues to struggle with figuring out digital business models. Despite this, we’re starting to see many in the industry embrace social media to engage their audiences (if you watched last night’s telecast you would have heard numerous mentions of Twitter and Facebook). As part of this foray into social media, the Grammys also launched a KickApps blog and hired two professional bloggers to cover the behind the scenes events at the show.

I’ve recently had numerous discussions with folks from the music industry about adapting their businesses to the digital world. The more progressive artists, labels and marketers are starting to understand what many of their peers in online media and corporate marketing have picked up on in 2008. That is, social media, while novel to many last year, is increasing becoming a core component of how they engage with their customers. It’s not just a ‘bolt on’ to a marketing plan or a website anymore.

Some other examples of deployments of KickApps in the music industry: Bonnaroo, ASCAP’s (The American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers) ASCAP Network and the Stone Temple Pilots.

With that, I’m going to leave you with a clip from last night’s show (just about the only one that hasn’t been removed from YouTube yet!). Oh, and stay tuned, we’ve got some really big news on the music front shortly that will elevate the industry.