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Q&A: BET digital chief, an ex-Facebook exec, set to push mobile envelope

Black Entertainment Television, or BET, is adjusting to meet the audience?s growing demand for mobile content by enlisting high-powered help to oversee the operation of critical mobile platforms.

In its bid to push the envelope with different digital and mobile initiatives, BET, the most prominent TV station targeting African American audiences, last month hired Kay Madati, previously head of entertainment and media on Facebook?s global marketing solutions team, as chief digital officer. Mr. Madati?s duties include overseeing BET Digital, including BET.com and BET Mobile, the latter of which provides apps, ringtones, games and video content for wireless devices; Centric.tv, the online home for the Centric cable channel; and BET Video On Demand.

?I don?t really see mobile as a challenge for BET, but rather an opportunity,? Mr. Madati said. ?Our audience over indexes in mobile and digital penetration and actively discovers, engages, and evangelizes our content on our mobile and digital platforms, so we have been aggressively working to deliver immersive and robust experiences that highlight the best of the BET Networks content experience.?

In an interview with Mobile Marketer, Mr. Madati discussed BET?s mobile ambitions. With BET viewing digital and social activations as a collaborative effort, some of the answers below were provided by Mr. Madati and some by chief marketing officer Vicky Free. 

How will Mr. Madati?s Facebook experience prove useful in this job in terms of creating engagement with mobile viewers?
KM: There is no question that Facebook (and Instagram, for that matter) set a high bar for best-in-class mobile-first and mobile-best experiences.  

Allowing users to evangelize and engage with mobile content.

There is a lot to learn from how they prioritize the simplicity of the user experience, couple it with the organic content discovery that is the lynchpin of both Facebook?s and Instagram?s feed experiences, and then seamlessly allow users to evangelize and engage with these experiences in meaningful and dynamic expressions of social currency distribution. 

This has to be the goal for any content publisher, and at BET we?re excited to apply these insights toward all our key initiatives and tent poles. 
 
What sort of advertising/marketing campaigns do you see BET launching that leverage mobile platforms?
VF: We are constantly seeking new ways to super-serve our audience on mobile platforms where young African American and multicultural consumers over index.  Seventy-five percent of these consumers engage with social media platforms via their mobile devices, so for BET, mobile is social, and social is mobile. The strategic foundation of all of our marketing campaigns is consumer engagement. 

Through a range of marketing tactics like custom hashtag integration, cast live tweeting, broadcasting consumer tweets on screen real-time and geo-fencing live events to deliver hyper-relevant and timely content to consumers on mobile devices, we aim to create an "always on" relationship with fans. 

We also deliver compelling content via targeted pre-roll video, audio billboards, and targeted mobile interstitials, all designed to engage and recruit consumers. 
 
From a marketing standpoint, how do you see BET unlocking more ways for the audience to watch, share, stream, download, and fully engage with all of the network?s content?
KM: We aspire to be ubiquitous for our users.  We want to be everywhere they are when they connect with our content on the devices and platforms they choose. For example, for the upcoming 2014 BET Hip Hop Awards, we will be building out digital voting experiences which will allow users to vote on the best performance from the show. 

We will be leveraging social and digital platforms like Twitter, Instagram, Facebook and Tumblr to pull fans into the interactive and community experiences around the show. The goal of all these efforts is to keep our users and audiences engaged in and around the show and the platforms of their choice.
 
How will BET leverage the shift in consumer content consumption and media habits to engage the audience, in terms of marketing campaigns? 
VF: Second screens don't compete with the viewing experience of BET viewers, they complete it.  

Our goal is to embrace this multi-screen consumption habit by offering fans entertaining and customized experiences on each screen.  One example of how we achieve this is through promotional partnerships with apps like Shazam, where viewers discover, create and share music playlists ignited by our content. 

Boosting engagement with viewers on mobile.

We executed highly successful partnerships with Shazam for our 2013 BET Hip Hop Awards, and with the finale of our hit drama Being Mary Jane. Once viewers tag the music in our programming, we seamlessly serve them sneak peeks of new shows, unlock new music from their favorite artists, and enhance the overall television viewing experience with complementary content.  

We continue to explore new partnerships that deeply engage consumers in our content and we are launching a unique integration with Spotify in season two of Being Mary Jane, coming soon
 
Is there anything else you?d like to highlight?
KM: The BET Hip Hop Awards is the perfect example of how BET is ready, willing and able to commit resources to building the best immersive digital, social and mobile experiences around our key content priorities.

This year?s show will be no different, and will feature our most ambitious digital and social executions to date. 

Last year?s Hip Hop Awards boasted one of the largest social footprints in cable, and we see a real opportunity to bring our users and audiences even closer to the action with the executions we have planned this year ? garnering even more traction and engagement across all of BET?s platforms.  

Final Take
Michael Barris is staff reporter on Mobile Marketer, New York.