Team Coco: Celebrity social media success

Team CoCo

May 1st 2012 saw the winners of the 16th annual "Webby awards" announced in New York with some noticeable winners from different areas of the internet. The awards themselves are awarded by the International Academy of Digital Arts and Sciences (IADAS) and they acknowledge the outstanding individuals whose groundbreaking Internet work stands out among others. Hailed as the "Internet's highest honour" by The New York Times, The Webby is the leading international award honouring excellence on the Internet including Websites, interactive advertising & media, online film & video and mobile & apps. One of the big winners at the 2012 award ceremony was Conan O Brien. His "Team Coco" who won the peoples voice award for celebrity/fan sites and was nominated for best humor site. In 2011 "Team Coco" won both the peoples' voice and webby award after only a short time in existence. 

Conan O'Brien and his Team Coco came about due to a work place dispute between O'Brien's then employers NBC and O'Brien over the coveted "Tonight Show" TV show on NBC. The argument streamed from the decision made by NBC to break their contract with O'Brien and give Jay Leno his role back as the host of "Tonight Show" after his new show was both a commercial and critical failure. O'Brien was offered the "Tonight Show" position in 2004 with a view to fully taking over from Jay Leno on June 1st 2009. Due to his drawing power Jay Leno was seen as an important free agent by NBC and so he was given a new show, the Jay Leno show, at the key lead in time of 10 PM. By January 2010 relations between the three parties had taken a turn for the worse due to declining ratings for both "Tonight Show" and "The Jay Leno Show" which was having an adverse effect on viewing figures and advertising revenue. NBC proposed to reinstate Leno to his 1135PM slot, with O'Brien to move to a new time of 1205 which did not break his contract. This new time would have a knock on effect on the other hosts on the NBC network which O'Brien felt would "seriously damage the greatest franchise in the history of broadcasting" and so he broke his contract by stepping down as presenter of the "Tonight Show" from January. O'Brien gained universal support for his stance on the matter from all across the various social media platforms with over 88% of twitter posts on the matter supporting him and over one million people joining the  two most prominent Facebook groups supporting O'Brien, "Team Conan" and "I'm With CoCo". O'Brien's fans used social media to great effect during this period with his fans changing their profile image,which was becoming a communal display of solidarity on Facebook and other social networks, to the I’m With COCO image created by Mike Mitchell who also created the accompanying website and Facebook Page.  O'Brien officially stepped from "Tonight Show" on 22nd of January not before attempting to sell off the "Tonight Show" set on the community website www.craigslist.org for two Coldplay tickets. 

In February 2010 O'Brien joined the social network Twitter, @ConanOBrien, and began to use the goodwill that he gained from his plight with NBC. The popularity of O'Brien on the internet was such that within the first hour that his profile was active he managed to match and surpass the number of followers that "The Jay Leno Show" official Twitter account had since it went live in April 2009. In March, O'Brien decided to use his Twitter account to follow someone at random and within a short period of time the Twitter followers of @LovelyButton grew from 3 to just under 20,000.

As part of his contract negotiations for stepping down from NBC, O'Brien reached a settlement that barred him from appearing on television as the host of a program until September 2010 but it did not bar him from performing before a live audience in a concert setting. To circumnavigate this stipulation O'Brien announced on Twitter that he was establishing the website www.teamCoCo.com where fans could buy tickets for his tour and where O'Brien had an outlet to keep the momentum going while he determined his next move regarding his TV career. From April to June 2010, O'Brien would perform 42 shows in the United States and Canada. In April of 2010 O'Brien once more chose to use Twitter to announce that he was to start a new TV show on the cable network TBS starting in November 2010.

Faced with the reality that he could easily slip from memory over his 9 month layoff, Conan and his advisors launched a massive social media campaign that included a presence on Twitter (he has over 1.7 million followers), Facebook (well over 1 million fans) and Youtube (nearly 4 million views to date). Not only was Conan active on all of these platforms, but he took the time to put together great material. To ensure that he remained relevant and in the public's consciousness O'Brien ensured that the “Legally Prohibited From Being Funny on Television Tour" stopped by the head offices of both Google and Twitter to perform for the staff of both organisations.

Following the completion of his tour O'Brien returned to his social media roots to promote the launch of his new show by teaming up with the location based social network "Foursquare" to launch "The Conan Blimp" into the skies above Philadelphia. The Conan Blimp also had its own website complete with a live cam and an always-updating map which allowed Conan fans to "Check-in" to get a special Conan Blimp Spotter Badge. Team CoCo's plan was to ensure that the blimp check ins would get distributed to all corners of the social web and spread the message that Conan was back. In conjunction with the launch of "The Conan Blimp" Team CoCo began live streaming a random series of irrelevant videos featuring  zombies, a dancing Taco, a competitive eating competition, special guests and bears dressed in 80s garb doing aerobics among others on their site. In addition,  at the start of October Team Coco launched an online poll, allowing viewers to vote on who should be the first guest on the new show which was launching in November. 

With its launch in November 2010, the show became something new that had not been seen before from a marketing perspective. The show was embraced and fully embraced social media like no other show before it. To reward the fans who supported him on the "Team CoCo" site the first episode "Episode Zero" was streamed on the site while TBS and Twitter released a specially commissioned  "Fail Whale" in honor of Conan's first episode. Initially TBS sold the show to advertisers on the pretence that it would have the same market appeal as both Leno and Letterman with the channel. By summer 2011 TBS began to repackage its advertising offerings by highlighting that O' Brien's show lures hard-to-reach young adults via online and social media, not only on TV. The average time spent watching "Conan" content on his website, www.TeamCoco.com, has increased 30% since the show launched, and the average time spent per visitor on the site has increased 103% with the online and TV audience for O'Brien estimated to be 20 million people between 18 and 49. 

O'Brien is one of the most digitally savvy TV hosts with a hands on approach to all aspects of his branding. He holds multiple digital meetings every week and fully understands the benefit of the online audience, both for his brand, his tune-in and his sponsors. Through his direction Team Coco maintains a strong presence on myriad of social platforms  such as Facebook, Twitter,Foursquare, Google+, GetGlue, YouTube and Tumblr. O'Brien and his team of ten are pretty disciplined about scheduling content and they strive to program natively for each platform as much as possible. To ensure that there is limited content overlap, each platform is treated like a franchise with exclusive content being created for each one. In certain cases Team Coco look for economies of scale to enable their creative efforts to get the most mileage. One of the most successful social media campaigns for Team Coco has been their F-Cards on Facebook which are a pre-recorded a series of videos that friends can post to other friends’ walls for holidays, like Valentine’s Day or birthdays, or for more mundane occasions, like embarrassing your relatives or unfriending people all staring Conan. On April 1st this year Conan joined forces with www.mashable.com for an Aprils fools day prank which saw him run the powerful gadgets and web news site. The prank was a play on O’Brien’s silly false ego and a lampooning of the niche on which the site concentrates. To cement the takeover Mashable’s Twitter icon was changed; out is the ubiquitous face of CEO Pete Cashmore, replaced by the very serious stare of a solemn, web-crazed O’Brien. Throughout the day O'Brien released videos on various topics such as "manual Tweets" and the Mashable's colour scheme was changed to reflect O'Brien's famous ginger hair. 

O'Brien is indeed an innovator in all aspects of digital marketing as can be seen from the various successes of both www.teamcoco.com and the various social media channels that his brand is present on. From the original set back he endured when his 20 year career with NBC came to an abrupt end in January 2010 to the career resurgence that he is undergoing thanks to his willingness to embrace new and emerging social media platforms. Throughout his various social platforms O'Brien has remained relevant to the general pubic by ensuring that he, and his brand stay ahead of curve. Although he did not get to leave his mark in the way he wanted to on the "greatest franchise in the history of broadcasting" perhaps with the path he has had to travel on his will create his own franchise of note.