Tonight, the Justin Bieber roast airs on Comedy Central. If you know anyone works on their social or video teams, you should buy them a coffee. For the past two weeks, they’ve been busy pushing out clips and promo shots across multiple platforms and tonight, they’ll gather to clip, tweet, and monitor social activity across the board.
Since releasing a teaser in which the Biebs is egged, the social strategy has been about walking a fine line between giving fans what they want and giving away too much and avoiding fatigue.
Danielle Garre, VP of Multiplatform Strategy and Production for Comedy Central said in a phone interview that her team has been:
focusing on delivering the roast to all of our fans in a way that is unique and special to each platform. We want to make sure the content is tailored, unique and authentic to the fans that engage with these platforms every day.
To do that, they’ve utilized Twitter Mirror for autographed shots of talent and Instagram to share clips. On Tumblr, they asked fans to create their own Bieber Roast posters, which will be featured during a pre-show. On their Snapchat Discover, more platform specific clips. Comedy Central worked closely with Bieber’s social team, who’s been active in promoting the event tonight as well.
And now it’s the big day. Garre says she has about 40 people coming in to take over and engage with fans tonight. They’ve created some unique assets that they hope to enhance in real time with whatever starts to trend on social. A video team will be in in to execute their clipping strategy — some clips are already picked out, others will be reactive to the conversations on social. Garre says that she wants to make sure the real time action shows:
…that we are very obviously engaging with our fans. We want them to know that we’re there with them and we’re not just looking for them to watch and digest what we’re putting out there, but that we care about what they’re putting out there as well.
And what if the Beliebers come out and break the Internet? All the better. Garre told me that they’re focused on engaging with content for the Comedy Central fan and that they’ll be clipping “Justin moments,” too. She says:
Their passion is admirable and we know that they’re going to come out in big numbers tonight and we’re hoping we can give them content that they care about as well…we really hope the Beliebers will be able to engage and enjoy that content.
Anything can happen. The pre-show for the roast starts at 9 E.T. on Comedy Central.