Beyond the Tiger King, which was the year’s most captivating show hands down, there have been a bunch of others that you may not heard of – and should. Relating to consumers means speaking their language and there’s a show out there for every audience segment. We’re going to explore a handful of top picks below!
In this article will cover these five hit shows and how you can emulate their success:
- Ted Lasso
- Lovecraft Country
- Little America
- Never Have I Ever
- The Great
And here are some facts to keep in mind around TV viewership and shows:
- Americans watched eight hours of TV each day during the pandemic, a number which has been cut in half recently.
- Younger consumers are more likely to use streaming services such as Netflix, instead of watching “traditional” TV
- Consumers with an emotional connection to a product make great brand ambassadors
Everyone is watching tv, this is a side effect of the pandemic. And consumers are weighing in on what they think and feel about the shows they’ve binged while waiting for the world to re-open. It’s estimated that Americans alone watched eight hours each day during lockdown, though that number has been cut in half to four hours per day since re-opening efforts have begun. Let’s see what consumer intelligence can tell us about a few favorites!
Ted Lasso & Positivity in a Pandemic
The premise of Ted Lasso seems basic, an overly optimistic soccer coach with no experience manages a struggling London-based soccer team. And it’s exactly what 2020’s home bound consumers needed.
Using social media monitoring to discover why, we searched for Ted Lasso and see segments of market conversation in relevant clusters. Each are completely transparent and explorable.
When we select Feel Good Shows, we being to see why consumers love this show – the unsinkable positivity of the main character met a need. We can also see where this was talked about (Reddit) and how many comments, like or engagements this user has received.
Understanding what your consumer feels about something is no longer an option, but a necessity for doing business with today’s fast-paced and fickle crowd. And this is something our next contestant does well.
Lovecraft Country – Battling Monsters, Fictitious and Real
Aside from the pandemic, in America there has been social unrest. HBO listened and chose to battle it peacefully on screen.
This social sci-fi series hit 1.5 million viewers on its season 1 finale, with 90% increase of digital viewership from its season premier. And on Twitter the season finale generated 369,800 night-of social interactions. All evidence that this show is striking a chord.
And social media listening agrees. Summary metrics reveal this show’s rise and fall in sentiments, mentions, posts and potential impressions. Lovecraft Country clearly captured 69% sentiment, as of this writing, which is great on a scale that goes from -100 to 100:
And by clicking on a date in the chart above, we can see a social media user speaking to how important this show is to black Americans. And we can see by the number of retweets, and potential impressions that @itsJalenB isn’t alone.
Lovecraft Country won because they knew how to connect with consumers on a deeper level. And it has paid off. If you hope to stand out, you need to hit your consumers where it counts – emotionally.
After all, emotionally involved consumers are the most effective brand ambassadors. We’ll look at sentiment some more in our next entry, showing how you can be sure you’re connecting on a personal level.
Little America – Big Impact
This show is about adjusting to a new home, while fighting to keep your own traditions alive. It’s touching and heartfelt, being described as a show which “actively tears down barriers.’ Immigration is a hot topic and Little America tackles it head on. How do consumers feel about this show’s portrayal? Consumer intelligence shows us below.
The clusters represent the conversation happening around this new series. It has been filtered to show the combined sentiment, and the size of the node represents its level of engagement. Lots of green shows us that Little America is well received. And there’s one significantly larger node standing out for us to explore:
Clicking on it reveals this article on a specific episode of Little America entitled “The Cowboy”, with a sentiment score visible at the bottom. This is critical because now the producers of the show know which episodes are making an impact and why. For example, here, it seems viewers like that it was closely connected to true stories featured on Epic Magazine. Show producers may want to consider doing more of that in the future:
Little America touches the hearts of all ages. Our next series however, is targeted towards a younger audience. It’s a coming of age tale of love and struggle in a first-generation Indian American teen.
Never Have I Ever
Younger consumers are more likely to use streaming services such as Netflix, instead of watching “traditional” TV. Which could be why “Never Have I Ever,” a coming-of-age TV series tackling topics close to YA lives, has been enthusiastically embraced by its younger Netflix consumers. We can see this in Netflix age demographics, which is a key element of any solid social media listening effort:
Beyond that, we can filter to show where conversations about this show are happening and what percentage of posters are male vs female:
For example, Tumblr has the largest amount of people posting about this show, with Twitter coming in second. And it’s interesting to note that most people opted to keep gender information private. This could speak to important emerging trends around gender and provide insight around messaging brands should create when speaker to these younger audiences.
We can filter by geography as well. Here, pulled from our twitter bar above, we have a fan from Mumbai sharing they are ready for season two.
Fine tuning your results is essential to obtaining relevant results, with noise filtered out. And our next show explains why.
The Great – Tracking Time
This TV show is a period series, rooted in history, about Catherine the Great, where humor and drama unfold in equal parts. It stands out as a different flavor of entertainment.
Tracking consumer chatter over the past two months, we can explore conversation spikes. For example, in October there was lots being shared around Count Orlo’s good looks.
Continuing to trace the line, the November focus shifted to Nicholas Hoult and Elle Fanning. Currently, our timeline speaks to why this show is a must watch – the clothing, the funny script and Sacha Dhawan, aka Count Orlo, who is clearly here to stay.
It shows us which characters and story elements are resonating with the series audience – and why. And making assumptions about what works is dangerous in such a competitive marketplace.
Consumer intelligence reveals so much more than that as well though, including emerging trends and other conversations that your business is missing without it. TV series that maximize their star power stand out, and you can too! Be sure to request a demo and create marketing campaigns that perform so well you’ll find yourself the talk of your target audience online.
