This year’s BRIT Awards reached its biggest audience to date by expanding its digital partnerships, with the event receiving 445 million post-show views across all platforms, including Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Snapchat, YouTube, Vevo, Shazam, Tumblr and, musical.ly.
The 2017 outing saw Apple Music offer audio and video highlights of the live performances, while Facebook Live garnered 4.8 million views as Capital FM DJs George Shelley and Lilah Parsons hosted a live look at the build up to the show. Post-event Facebook video views were up 47% on the previous year, including highlights from the show, red carpet clips and acceptance speeches.
Meanwhile, YouTube live-streamed the event for a fourth consecutive year, reaching one million viewers. YouTube sensation Caspar Lee hosted the Stream, which was available to viewers online outside the UK. Lee also interviewed stars on the Red Carpet. In addition to this, BRITs grew its international reach this year, producing bespoke content for in South America and Italy.
Elsewhere, following the success of her photo portraits in 2016, Mary McCartney created an exclusive Instagram video portrait studio backstage, capturing the likes of Rita Ora, Emeli Sandé, Katy Perry, Maisie Williams, Ellie Goulding, Little Mix and The 1975.
The BRITs once again teamed up with Twitter to create bespoke emojis for this year’s performers, as well as a Twitter Sticker pack available exclusively from the morning of the show. Little Mix were the most tweeted about performers, with The 1975 taking the most-tweeted #BRITs moment as quotes from critics were displayed on-screen as they performed. The #BRITs emoji was used over 2.6 million times since its launch when the 2017 nominees were announced.
Snapchat covered show with a dedicated Story. Total viewers this year passed 12 million, up from nine million in 2016. The story featured Snaps from performers, nominees, guests and the audience, as well as content from Snapchat producers on the ground at The O2 Arena.
Social video community, musical.ly provided coverage of the event for the first tim, delivering content live from the red carpet. Furthermore, the BRITs partnered with Tumblr for a user-generated-content campaign, which tapped into fan-art communities. This partnership drove an over 121% increase in engagement around the awards show on the platform.
Gifs created by Giphy on the recently-launched BRITs channel received a whopping 112 million views, both on Giphy itself and via partners including Facebook and Twitter.
There was a 34% increase in users Shazaming the show, with the most Shazamed moment being The Chainsmokers and Coldplay performance, while there have been 27 million views to-date of BRITs performances on Vevo and YouTube. Ed Sheeran’s collaboration with Stormzy alone has hit 8.1 million views so far.
Dorothy Hui, chair of the BRITs digital committee, said: "This year's initiatives were designed to give the audience the opportunity to further engage and personalise their experience with the show on the platform(s) of their choice. Our goal was to let fans experience the highlights and the emotions from BRITs 2017 alongside their favourite artists — we are thrilled to have been able to bring them along for this journey."
Giuseppe De Cristofano, digital director, BPI and BRIT Awards, added: “The BRITs continues to develop into a valuable platform for British music thanks, in part, to an integrated digital campaign. This strategy is fast-extending the reach of the Awards across international audiences, enabling global music fans to engage with British artists through their preferred social platform.”
