Case Study: vMTV's Virtual Hills Makes Pepsi Cooler Than MTV's On-Air "The Hills"

In March, MTV said that it would be pushing its virtual worlds as a channel for advertisers at the upfronts later this week. The major push, it seems, is coming from a new case study of Pepsi's work in vMTV. An online survey of 600 consumers conducted for MTV Networks in January by Harris Interactive and MauroNewMedia looked at 300 viewers of "The Hills" and 300 non-viewers. Fans like the on-air "Hills," but they love Pepsi' virtual presence. Users average 28-minutes/interaction with Pepsi's presence compared to its 30-second televised.

Moreover, of the 240 who only watched on TV almost half said that Pepsi supported music and 30% said it was in touch with youth culture.  15% thought it was "cool" or "hip" and 1% said it kept them in touch with the latest trends.

Online, though? Over 90% said that Pepsi promoted music and artists and close to 70% said Pepsi was in touch with youth culture and cool or hip. And Pepsi's in-world soda can, distributed through vending machines, was vMTV's top-selling product in 2007. Over 110,000 cans were used more than 650,000 times and were  seen in use over 2.4 million times by 85% of vMTV users.

As for the upfronts, MTV's pitch is that as advertising's reach on television lags, connected properties online  are a strong alternative. Part of the benefit the study identifies is that there are groups of fans that build  the community with identifiable behaviors--a cross between Richard Bartle's archetypes and Malcom Gladwell's Tipping Point theories. "Seekers," 54% of the participants, look for all the content they can find. "Generators," about 33% of the participants, go farther, creating messages, narratives, and avatars.

"We think of our audience as 'Generation P,' an audience that is programming their own world and creating content around our shows," Tim Rosta, EVP of Integrated Marketing at MTVN, told AdWeek, "What we've learned from the study is the more our audience engages with brand across platform the greater level of brand affinity they have. When we infuse it appropriately, brands become part of the dialog giving us the ability to create brand ambassadors. They know somebody is paying for the programming so they embrace brands where we don't try to fool them."

[via AdWeek]

Comments

[Robin Zaragoza]

I know that this article is very old, but I'm doing research and just read it.

Its worth noting that your article mis-interprets some information.

1. You say, "Users average 28-minutes/interaction with Pepsi's presence compared to its 30-second televised."

The 28 minutes is actually the average amount of time spent in the virtual world per session, not their time spent engaged with Pepsi as a brand. This therefore is not a fair comparison to their televised ads.

2. You say, "Online, though? Over 90% said that Pepsi promoted music and artists..."

The 90% is actually referring to cross-platform viewers that watched the TV show, went online AND entered The Hills virtual world. That's the whole point of this study - engagement increases as the number of platforms the viewer is exposed to increases.

[Joey Seiler]

Thanks for the correction

[hannah]

whassup world. i love the hills and laguna beach. L.C. IS AMAZING. she needs to become friends w/ heidi again i think!