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Why the timing is right for Bell Media Brand Partnerships’ integrated social opps

LEFT: MuchMusic

VJs Georgia Kolev and Teddy Tong are wearing Roots Much Love t-shirts. The collection was created for Roots in fall 2021. The limited release features customdesigned artwork by MuchMusic VJs Sadé Powell and where people would watch games and live-tweet about them, but the pandemic helped it explode across all social platforms.” It’s also helpful that Bell Media has access to Bell Mobility’s first-party data, so it can target socialmedia-first branded content executions at the most engaged users.

A great example is the recent partnership between TSN and Coca-Cola for the FIFA World Cup. Rotstein says, “For every team Canada game, talent would broadcast their commentary in real time on YouTube. So you could watch the game on TSN, and then stream the commentary from our network of [social media] channels centered on a younger demographic.” The commentary included talent from both Bell Media youth-centered brands BarDown and MuchMusic. The segments were shot in a Coca-Cola-branded space, giving the brand up to three hours of exposure.

To pull off a campaign like this, Bell Media puts together a media plan encompassing everything from broadcast media to digital placement on all its dot-coms, as well as out-of-home and radio.

WHY TRY TO CAPTURE ATTENTION FROM THE SIDELINES when you can be in the game?

From linear TV to SVOD and AVOD, digital, social, radio and out-of-home, there are few players that can bring a portfolio to the table like Bell Media Brand Partnerships which is why brands such as Coca-Cola, Roots, and RBC are working directly with the content studio to create and deliver 360° integrated campaigns across influential media assets including TSN, the Gen Z- and millennialfocused BarDown platform, BNN Bloomberg, and MuchMusic.

Amanda Rotstein, Bell Media’s head of social strategy, brand partnerships, explains how the division began. “Our mandate is to offer clients innovation and integration in the social media space,” she says. “We always thought of our brands as being influencers themselves, so we thought about how we could leverage that for our clients and partners.”

Bell Media staffed up just before the pandemic, which turned out to be excellent timing. “We saw a huge rise in people sitting with their phones and consuming social media from our channels alongside watching our content,” Rotstein says. “The behaviour had been there in sports,

For business brands such as banks, BNN Bloomberg collaborates on “nested content” executions. The Bell Media team writes the co-branded content and builds a microsite that will live within the BNN Bloomberg website, supported by a social media amplification campaign.

To grow its Gen Z and millennial audience, Bell Media has been leveraging MuchMusic and BarDown as well as partnerships with TikTok, Snapchat and YouTube. Reach is significant, as MuchMusic has 2.7 million TikTok followers, eclipsing the likes of BuzzFeed, Wired and Rolling Stone

While the MuchMusic TV channel rebranded as simply Much in 2013, the MuchMusic brand was revived in 2021 in partnership with TikTok. Early clients have included the RBCxMusic platform created to promote young artists and musicians, and Roots Canada, with which Bell Media partnered to create a custom clothing line co-branded with MuchMusic and Roots. The collection sold out in one day.

The Roots example speaks to Bell Media’s unique platform capabilities: optimization and results. “In social media amplification, we work with the client to come up with the KPIs and the key target demo, and then we build the audience,” Rotstein says. “As we’re going along we might see that one audience, piece of content or platform is performing better than the others. So we’ll shift efforts and money throughout the entire campaign.”

Metrics matter, Rotstein says, “But we don’t get out of bed just to see how many impressions we made. We dig into creative and what pieces of creative performed best. We want clients to have actionable insights into their key demo.”

A great example is RBC Training Ground, a program that incubates athletes into Olympians. Bell Media works with RBC to create content with the mandate to get as many kids signed up as possible. Bell Media learned there’s success targeting parents, so it adjusted content to encourage parents to help their kids join.

"Vanity metrics are generally how branded social media campaigns are benchmarked," says Rotstein. "But with Bell First Party Data and a mix of our brands, our content, and client brand-sell, we can offer attribution and conversion more clearly."

Partnership amanda.rotstein@bellmedia.ca