In a move that highlights just how important online video
has become in the last decade, MTV is planning to re-open the doors to its
popular House of Style series as a
"digital first" property this fall, explain MTV executives involved in the
project.
The reboot of the classic series with new video segments and
a number of social media and digital extensions will be available for at its MTV Style site beginning on Oct. 9.
As part of the effort to reboot the classic series, which
ran in a variety of forms from 1989 to 2000 on MTV, the company is planning a
series of events to build buzz around the property.
To begin with, the company has gone back to the archives of
the original run of the House of Style
and created an extensive online and social media experience around the content
that includes selected video clips, summaries of each episode and a curated
commentary on what the interviews, stories and other content mean for the
fashion world today.
That material went live Tuesday, July 24, as the House of Style Collection, with over 167
video episodes.
This will be followed by the launch of a documentary on the House of Style on Aug. 7 designed to
highlight the story of the series, the connection between music and fashion
that the series explored in the 1990s and the impact this fashion had on
today's style.
On Sept. 6, MTV Networks will announce the host for the new
digital episodes on the red carpet at the 2012 MTV Video Music Awards.
Colin Helms, senior VP of MTV Digital Media at MTV Networks,
noted that the relaunch fits into a larger digital strategy of "super-serving"
audiences with specific interests, such as style, on MTV Style and other
digital platforms.
MTV Style now attracts around 1 million unique visitors each
month.
As the company looked to expand the video content already
available at MTV Style, users often asked when the company might be bringing
back the iconic series. "We wanted to create a flagship series for MTV Style
and decided to bring back the House of Style
for the digital age," Helms notes.
Since the series ended its MTV run, however, the way people
consumed fashion and related to it has undergone a radical change, which has
prompted a very different approach for the new series, notes Sophia Rai, VP of
MTV Digital Productions.
A key component of the new series will be its flexibility,
Helms and Rai stress. Episode lengths are likely to vary between one to five
minutes and a great deal of stress will be put on social media tools that will
allow a "conversation" about the series and fashion to continue between
episodes on other platforms, such as Pinterest.
"We want to create something in the digital space that can
turn on a dime and cover trends as they are changing very quickly," in a way
that might be difficult with a more traditional TV series, Rai explains.
Details of content, promotional strategy and the exact
format are still be worked out, but MTV Networks is looking at the property as
a "digital first" effort with episodes that will appear multiple times a week
during October and November.
It will be cross-promoted between platforms and segments
could appear on-air as well, though the company isn't releasing specific
details.
"We are thinking about it as 'digital first' but we are
creating it in a way that can work on all other screens and we do think there
may be some options for running it on linear channels," Helms says.
In developing the archival material that will launch Tuesday
as the House of Style Collection, the
company has cleared a great deal of material for all digital platforms from 58
episodes and focused on making the material relevant for today's audience.
To reintroduce the content to newer audiences, the archive
is also accessible in a variety of ways. For example, a user can access content
via a list of celebrity names that would provide access to all the episodes
where Cindy Crawford or Karl Lagerfeld appeared.
