AT&T Mobility Considers Making TV Spots From Online Video Show Clips

As AT&T moves deeper into producing online video shows for mobile viewers, it is looking at taking the clips from its popular Hello Lab series and turning them into 30-second and 60-second TV spots for the first time.

"We're looking at bringing the video into offline channels this year," said Liz Nixon, director of emerging and social media marketing at AT&T Mobility.

AT&T Hello Lab is a year-­long project featuring 10 digital creators at the forefront of mobile entertainment, including Grace Helbig, Shaun McBride, Brandon Armstrong, Damon and Jo, along with others. The company plans to announce the lineup at VidCon Thursday.

Produced in collaboration with the Fullscreen Strategic Content Group, AT&T Hello Lab connects Internet influencers to their communities through content series, live experiences, albums, giveaways, podcasts and more. The program drives huge results for AT&T across social platforms since launching in February.

Hello Lab isn't the only successful venture. @SummerBreak, the real-time social media reality show, returns for a fourth season this summer geared for socially connected Millennials and Gen Z. Eleven new cast members will join this year, including Jessica and Alexis.

"We look for kids that already have friendships and we're just jumping into their world and relationships," said Billy Parks, SVP of Fullscreen’s Strategic Content Group.

This year Fullscreen launched a way for the audience to follow their group chat text on a mobile app called Public, he said.

In the first three years @SummerBreak garnered 150 million views to date. Season 3 averaged 7 million views per week, growing across YouTube, Snapchat, Instagram and Facebook with 2.6 billion impressions.

AT&T has learned what works and what doesn't through trial and error. Nixon said the brand let go of the things that didn't work and held on to the ones that did.

In Season One AT&T learned from fans that the episodes were too long. Commercials, dubbed promercials, told through the eyes of the talent didn't feel authentic. By Season Three AT&T grounded the spots in the stages of life that the kids went through. One AT&T initiative focuses on bringing awareness to distractions while behind the wheel of a car. So the brand created a video simulating a car accident caused by the kids participating in car karaoke.

The segment gained more than 20 million views without any paid media because it was grounded in a cultural experience. 

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