By Hannah Chapple, {grow} Community Member
Karaoke, anyone?
Last week, Apple Inc. announced they’ve ordered a 16-episode Carpool Karaoke series from CBS to be hosted exclusively on their online music-streaming service, Apple Music.
If you’ve never watched the Carpool Karaoke skit, well, you’re missing out — big time! The new Apple series, which is a spin-off of the Carpool Karaoke skit featured on CBS’s “The Late Late Show with James Corden” has surpassed over 830 million YouTube views to date. The skit features James Corden driving around with celebrities such as Jennifer Lopez, Justin Bieber, and the First Lady Michelle Obama, singing, you guessed it… karaoke.
Let’s just take a moment to soak in the hilarity of these skits.
Who will be the host of Apple’s Carpool Karaoke?!
While there are many factors that come into play when making a host selection, affinity data is the perfect way to identify potential candidates that will leave a lasting impression.
In other words, we can can have some fun by predicting for Apple who the most popular host would be based on social media data!
Using a platform like Affinio, which analyzes audiences based on their shared interests and affinities, we can easily see who is most relevant to the passionate Carpool Karaoke audience.
To begin my analysis, I ran a Tweet Content Report on anyone mentioning “Carpool Karaoke” on Twitter in the past 30 days. We can easily see a break out out of interest-based clusters such as: 5SOS Super Fans, Marketing/Tech Fans, General Pop Culture enthusiasts, and Directioners (this comes as no surprise since One Direction starred in a skit and surpassed 77 million views!).
If there is a specific viewer target Apple Music is really trying to attract — let’s say the “General Pop Culture enthusiasts” cluster — they could hone in on data of this cluster.
Diving into the General Pop Culture Enthusiasts cluster, some of top picks for hosts based on their Relevance score are: Ellen DeGeneres, singer Justin Timberlake, actor Neil Patrick Harris, ex-Idol host Ryan Seacrest, and actor Channing Tatum.
Remember Channing Tatum’s hit appearance on Spike’s Lip Sync Battle? The episode was dubbed the “Tatum Takeover” and featured a Channing Tatum we haven’t seen before — this was internet gold.
Interestingly enough, Lip Sync Battle originally started as a skit on the late-night show “The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon” and was picked up as a show by Spike shortly after and has been a huge success. Perhaps it’s time for Channing to show us his own singing chops and help Apple make the transition from a late-night skit to its own star-studded show.
In order for Apple Music to strike gold once again, they will need to choose guests that their new audience will want.
So now that we have discovered the host people would love to see, who should guest star?
Looking at the most influential (singer) celebrities to this audience (who haven’t already been featured on the skit) we can see the following names high on the interests list.
Top 10 Dream Carpool Karaoke Stars:
- Taylor Swift
- Adam Levine
- Justin Timberlake
- Ed Sheeran
- P!nk
- Lady Gaga
- Beyonce
- Sam Smith
- Katy Perry
- Rihanna
When the right celebrities are used to promote a series, product, or brand, the results can not only be financially rewarding, but memorable.
Today, deep consumer insights are changing how strategies are developed. Selecting a star that resonates with an audience is a powerful method for engaging with a desired community, staying relevant, and generating buzz – which will be critical for Apple Music, especially when guarded behind a paywall.
Let us know who you want to see featured and host Carpool Karaoke down below!
Hannah Chapple is a Marketing + Content Coordinator for @Affinio | @AcadiaU marketing alum (’14) | Loves music, lattes, and positive energy. Follow Hannah on LinkedIn and Twitter. Illustrations courtesy Affinio.
