There was a time we watched Eurovision for the quirky commentary of Terry Wogan and more recently Graham Norton. But with the recent introduction of a live feed, Twitter has added another dimension to the iconic event.
Eurovision first tapped into the Twitter phenomenon in 2009 when Norwegian superstar Alexander Rybak won in Russia – since then Twitter has become as almost as entertaining as the Eurovision Song Contest itself.
During this year’s Eurovision held in Dusseldorf Germany from 11-14 May 2011 the Grand Final had an estimated 500 tweets per second ranging from comments about the pants the lead singer from Hotel FM (contestant from Romania) wore, to parts of the anatomy which the sand artist should draw on the big screen during the Ukrainian performance. The running live Twitter commentary added a new, very colourful and entertaining dimension to the contest.
So what will happen in the year’s ahead? Tweeting during the event will continue, but live social media commentary, including Twitter, will become an important part of a winning strategy.
Social media unleashes the comments and thoughts that were once confined to a lounge room somewhere in Europe into an international forum where the global consciousness is laid bare for all to see and share.
Social media allows watchers and those interested in the event to share opinions and personal recommendations in real time and this ability can and will alter the way someone will vote within the 15 minute voting window, as well as positioning and creating an effective brand around an act in the lead up to the competition.
This will be particularly good news to the UK as they battle the obvious ‘block voting’ of the south and eastern European countries and look to winning their first title since they revolutionised Eurovision by using popular band Katrina and the Waves to win in 1997.
My tip to the UK is to combine a popular generational artist with the power of social media. Selecting Blue this year was almost a stroke of genius, but had it been supported by an effective integrated social media campaign, this would have arguably won them the title with ‘I can’.
I say bring out the Pet Shop Boys, Elton John , or adopted sisters Kylie Minogue or Madonna and combine this with social media and the UK will take Eurovision 2012 by absolute storm!
