SUMMARY ON THE UTILIZATION OF FACEBOOK AS A PUBLICITY VEHICLE DURING THE 2010 FINAL SEASON OF ABC’S LOST

By

Anna D’Aloisio

Public Relations Journal (2010)

Oluwakemi Gbadamosi & Shaymaa Al’Kharusi (Group B)

Objective: This paper analyzed how the Public relations team of ABC’s Lost (television series) utilized face book as publicity tool, compared to the traditional media tactic during the shows season’s finale. To see if there was need to create additional content solely for facebook to entice and excite the audience to watch the show until the finale.

Introduction: Cultivating and maintaining relationships between corporate entities and their publics is a key element of public relations, particularly in this internet age. This gives rise to the need for public relations practitioners to embrace the interactivity that the internet especially social media networks provide. In recent times social media sites such as facebook, twitter, myspace.com amongst others have become important vehicles for brands to cultivate relationships with their publics; this is obvious with companies such as coca-cola, McDonalds, Procter & Gamble e.t.c, utilising the face book fan page application.

One of the key-component of social media especially face book which by the way has about 400 million users is the ability to connect with a community of individuals who share similar likes and dislikes. A five trend year report revealed that 95% of PR practitioners state that social media offers organizations low-cost ways to develop relationships, despite this report practitioners are more inclined to traditional internet means such as emails, blogs, and intranet but slow to integrate more technological tools that cater much audience such as social networks and virtual worlds.

Network television is one of the top organizations that have embraced social media, with 25 top rated TV shows having a fan page presence on facebook in 2010, creating an environment that allows for viewers participation, which translates to larger audience and steady revenues. Network televisions create a ‘water cooler’ moments on facebook about their favourite series than one to one conversation by the water cooler or copier.

Situation Analysis: The television series Lost debuted on ABC network in 2004, with the first season averaging 16 million viewers, making it a top-ten show among the 18-49 age bracket (the currency of broadcast television). By May 2007, ABC announced the end of lost scheduled for May 2010, citing artistic reasons for the cancellation and generate more revenue for advertising during the season finale. The idea behind the reason given by the show’s writers and producers was to keep active viewers for the final season and increase advert rate for the finale.

Financially high viewer ratings in a season finale, translates to charging a premium to advertisers, which made the objective of ABC’S P.R effort to be cultivating and maintaining their fans giving the potential advantage revenue of a series finale.

The show became the first tv program to announce a highly anticipated season finale in an era when   face book and other social media where becoming popular, the show face book page became an ideal avenue for fans and critics to share ideas on how they think the show will end, with Lost script co-coordinator regularly following comments and answering questions.  

Method: The electronic press releases on ABC.com and facebook posts of the final season were analyzed. The show put up steady information about the program during production a.k.a drip-drip-drip, which included events, sweep stakes, promotional items, teasers of upcoming episodes, miscellaneous clips, Lost tracks, re-watch episodes with commentaries, cast members music videos and domestic and international statistics. A total of 62 posts were put up on facebook by lost publicity crew, including posts that asked fans to say their good-byes to the show and characters they would love to ask questions. Links were used to encourage fans to watch teasers.

Results: Press releases encouraged media and visitation to the series website, while face book posts encouraged fans to visit sites for video clips and music tracks. Facebook served as an additional tactic, a viral avenue that gathered 3 million fans which also helped in the stimulation of dialogues amongst them. Although no link can be shown on the effect of facebook exposure to increase in viewership, the fan base growth on facebook is note worthy; from 1.8 million  on March 3^rd to 3.7 million on May 23^rd (evening of the season finale).

Lost season viewership of 13.6 million on the season finale was the highest in the series entire season. According to Nielsen highly ranked TV series doesn’t automatically translate to high number of face book fans e.g. NCIS (R= 5, V= 15.2, FB fans= 117, 081); Greys Anatomy (R= 6, V=15.2, FB fans= 4.3); Lost (R=10, V=13.6, FB fans= 3.9). There are two possible reasons for this; the number of seasons the series has aired and the year a facebook page was established for it.

Conclusion: The creation of a virtual community by lost followers indicates the advantages open to P.R practitioners to investigate and experiment how social media sites can be used as tools to disseminate information to various on-line publics. Lost analysis illustrates the potential of viral growth, how a single post can be seen by millions. Shows and brands encourage followership on facebook which is a strategy that helps increase an online fan base, it helps create and solidify relationships between corporate entities and individuals who consume their products and services.

It will be interesting to explore number of traditional media impressions received against the number of facebook fans amassed during a publicity campaign. Evaluation tool is valuable to help P.R practitioners in measuring the success of their social media posts, a tool that legitimizes the social media as a worthy tactic for future publicity efforts.