The South African Broadcasting Corporation (SABC)’s biggest commercial tv station, SABC 1, is pleased to announce that they’ve garnered over One Billion Social Media Impressions with their #SABC1siON campaign!
For their Summer campaign, SABC 1 launched a campaign with the strap-line, SABC 1 siON to promote their new summer content. This was launched through a TVC on the channel as well as other promotional material, including digital content posted on all the channel’s social media platforms. This campaign has been a tremendous success, especially on their digital platforms where their numbers have skyrocketed.
For the first time ever, SABC 1 has accumulated over 1 Billion Impressions across all social media platforms. This means people saw the #SABC1siON posts over a billion times between September 2022 and February 2023.
Derived from the popular youth terminology of ‘putting someone on’, the #SABC1siON strap-line was a vibrant and youth-centric approach to engage with SABC 1 viewers. The purpose of which was to reinvigorate the brand and reposition SABC 1 as the channel that is forever ‘switched on’ to the culture, the latest talent, Mzansi content, social media trends etc. and will continue to ‘put people on’ offering the best local video entertainment.
To support the TV efforts in communicating this message as well as promoting SABC 1’s summer content, a digital strategy was conceived and the hashtag #SABC1siON was created to accompany all this content. This has included a nationwide Hip-hop meets AmaPiano competition termed the #SABC1siON Challenge; through this campaign, some of Mzansi’s favourite rappers got involved in creating viral Tik Tok videos and Instagram reels to a SABC 1 beat – among these were Stogie T, Gigi Lamayne, Rouge, Holy Alpha and Nomfundo Yekani. Through this competition ,up-and-coming musicians got involved and were awarded an opportunity to rub shoulders with their idols at the SA Hip Hop Awards held in December 2022. This competition was just one part of the puzzle leading up to the major success SABC 1’s digital platforms have enjoyed.
During this period, social media posts from the SABC 1 platforms reached well over 15 Million social media users, with an engagement rate of over 3,6 million. These are incredible numbers and a wonderful feat for a campaign that has only been running a little over four months.
Blueprint Group conceptualized the social media campaign through their social media agency Bluecloud AI. “One Billion Impressions is a massive accomplishment for any campaign. This mammoth achievement shows just how dynamic the SABC 1 digital content is and just how much potential still exists within SABC 1’s video entertainment offering. Through our digital strategy, we aimed at getting the viewers to co-create content with SABC 1 we understood that the modern viewer consumes tv in a multi-screen environment where social media commentary now also becomes factored in.
Our digital strategy involved curating SABC 1 content specially developed with digital platforms in mind. This involved taking moments from shows like – Too hot to be single (#THTBS), Fooled by Love (#FBL), Uzalo & Skeem Saam and a variety of other shows, and creating viral video clips, GIF’s, Meme’s, polls and engaging posts that would get the public watching the SABC 1 shows and engaging with the channel on digital platforms at the same time. Through-out this campaign period the #SABC1siOn has trended a number of times and the majority of the reach has been organic. We are very proud of this achievement and the team behind it. – Weza Matomane- MD of Bluecloud AI. X
“1 Billion impressions from a campaign launched in September is no small feast and a true testament that SABC is serious about its digital strategy and staying in tune with viewers. SABC 1 is a dominant brand in South Africa on multiple platforms, not just a linear channel evidently. As a youth channel which serves the youth, this 1 billion mark is a milestone that confirms that SABC 1 is indeed for SA’s youth who are multi-screen consumers of content, and we are grateful for their continued support.
More digital initiatives are coming from SABC this year, so this is just the beginning. Thank you to our partners BluePrint Group AI for the work and the brand team at SABC 1 for their hard work and dedication. SABC 1 SiOn!!” Dichaba Phalatse, Acting Head of Marketing. Moving forward, he says they intend to increase their digital content offerings further and ensure even more engagement with viewers and captivate them on SABC social platforms.
