WORK/FOUR WEDDINGS

Four Weddings premiered on Living TV in summer 2009, and was a huge hit for the digital channel. From the makers of “Come Dine with Me”, the show takes four brides to each other’s weddings, which they rate in terms of Food, Venue, Dress and Overall Presentation. Caustic commentary and the brides themselves, make the show compulsive viewing.

Virgin Media Television, the owners of Living, approached Monterosa through their media agency GoodStuff, to develop a social viewing experience to accompany the show. They had seen the Apprentice Predictor and felt that a similar experience would work well with their new reality show.

The idea combined an early version of our reac.tv “Reaction Stream” with a new live rating gadget which put viewers into the brides shoes, rating the weddings on the same categories as they watched the show. At the end of the show, the “Viewer’s verdict” revealed how the online ratings stacked up against the TV ratings by the brides themselves. It was simple, but great fun to compare opinions in realtime.
Here’s the TV trailer:

The Reaction Stream encouraged viewers to engage with one another, submitting witty comments and banter to the stream of moderated alongside the show. These comments also pulled in Twitter feeds from the show’s official feed and other tweets about the show, and allowed viewers to use their own Facebook and Twitter accounts to share the experience with their friends.

Everyone at Living TV got behind the social viewing experience, from schedulers to continuity presenters, with the end result that the social experience felt like a natural part of the show, and added value to the audience, whether or not they were participating online. Research proved that the experience was an incredibly positive one for everyone who took part.

Like all of our projects, this used Monterosa’s technology platform for the live comment stream and live rating gadget.