Eurovision: The cultural phenomenon’s perfect duet with social media

Transcript

CAT ANDERSON Welcome to Social Creatures, a podcast from Sprout Social. I’m Cat, and I’m here to explore some of my favourite success stories from the world of social media. This is a space for everyone. And, really, nearly anything goes. But what makes an account successful or popular? Honestly, it’s hard to know. But that’s what we’re here to find out.

Throughout the series, we’ll talk with the brands behind the accounts you know and some that you don’t to explore the weird and wonderful ways that businesses, organisations, and individuals have achieved success on social media, all the tangible insights that you can apply to your own social strategies. And we’ll be heeding the advice of Stacey, our social media agony aunt, who’s here to guide you through some of your trickiest digital dilemmas.

This week, I’m joined by Dave Goodman, communications lead for the Eurovision and Junior Eurovision Song Contest. To say that I am excited is a huge understatement as a lifelong fan of Eurovision. I love Eurovision, because I think it is the total perfect embodiment of everything that’s fun, diverse, beautiful, and, frankly, a little bit mad about Europe.

Social media is increasingly part and parcel of the whole Eurovision experience as well. And, TikTok has now been announced as the official entertainment partner for Eurovision. So, I can’t wait to hear about that.

I should mention that we are recording this a few weeks in advance of the finals. So, we don’t know the results of this year’s competition yet. But if you would like to follow Eurovision on social—and, of course, why wouldn’t you?—you can do it on every single platform, @Eurovision.

Dave, welcome to Social Creatures.

DAVE GOODMAN Thanks very much for having me. It’s great to be here.

CAT ANDERSON Oh, I am going to absolutely plague you with questions. So, yeah. Get settled in.

I think, just to kick it off, for maybe people around the world who don’t know what Eurovision is, for people who have watched it, many of us will remember watching it and being totally absorbed by the music, by the colour, by the whole spectacle of it, but what does Eurovision mean to you and what are your earliest memories of it?

DAVE GOODMAN The Eurovision Song Contest is the world’s largest live music event. So, it’s huge. It reaches over a hundred and eighty million people every year who watch the two semi-finals and the – the grand final. But it all began, of course, in 1956, with seven countries in a tiny theatre in Lugano, Switzerland. And it was mostly a radio show back then. So, it really has grown and grown and grown over those years from those seven countries to forty countries, which we have this year.

And for me, it’s part of my cultural heritage, I think. And the same for many, many Europeans. In every country you visit, everybody has a relationship with this event, because it’s like Christmas. It comes around once a year, and three generations of people who’ve grown up with it.

For me, Eurovision as a kid was watching with my family on a Saturday night. It was staying up late. It was my mum ironing in the corner, because she always used to iron on a Saturday night. And for me, my first memories really, well, of – of a TV show that was not like what I was used to watching in Britain, where I grew up. In Manchester, in England. It was something different. It was glamourous. It was distinct. It was different languages. It was different television presentation. It looked different. It felt different. And there was a sense, even when I was a kid, I was part of something bigger. I was part of an event where millions of people in countries I’d never heard of or seen or visited, were watching the same television programme as I was. And that – that really got me as a kid. 

And over my teenage years, it became more palpable, and the interest became more and more intense in this great event that united people, that was just special and something different and exciting and dramatic. And there’s so many fans of Eurovision who write about it, blog about it, podcasts now about it. They say the same thing: It – it connects them with other people.

CAT ANDERSON I couldn’t have said it better myself. You said it’s like Christmas. ‘Cause it is like Christmas. I think it might be more hotly-anticipated than Christmas for a lot of people. But that whole thing about it being something that brings people together, I totally agree with you. I think it makes me feel more European. I feel like I get to taste so many different types of cultures from just watching it.

DAVE GOODMAN And it’s beyond politics. You can win this competition from anywhere in Europe. It is not a political competition, and it’s beyond the boundaries of the European Union. And there’s obviously been a lot of talks since Brexit in the United Kingdom about why is Britain still in Eurovision. Because the European Broadcasting Union, who I work for, which is the world’s leading alliance, in fact, of public service media, has existed since 1950, before the EU even existed. And our territories go well beyond the EU’s territories. We have fifty-six countries in our – in our union and forty countries in this year’s song contest. And, of course, there’s only twenty-seven in the EU. 

So, this is a European project that goes beyond the European borders and is watched internationally now, thanks to YouTube. Thanks to TikTok this year, where we’re going to be live streaming for the first time. This show is huge globally now. It’s really important to note that this is now a global event. It’s not just about Europe. And Eurovision is – is actually the network of satellites that the EBU runs. That’s why it’s called Eurovision.

But, of course, we’ve always had more than just Europe in the competition, and we are certainly watched across the world now in every country. In every country on – on earth, there’s somebody watching the Eurovision Song Contest. Even in North Korea.

CAT ANDERSON I feel like the pride that you have in your job is so palpable. And I hope that I’m matching your pride with my jealousy, because what an amazingly fun job.

You mentioned the first Eurovision in Switzerland all those years ago, and it seems like a communications team might not have been existing at that point for Eurovision and certainly not in the way it is today. Would you be able to tell us a little bit what your role involves and how that changes across the course of the year?

DAVE GOODMAN Yes, of course. I mean, it’s interesting. Even my friends, when I talk to them, they can’t believe that there’s a job working on the Eurovision Song Contest year-round, that I have an annual salary to work on the Eurovision Song Contest. “But it’s only once a year, Dave. It’s only in May. What are you doing the rest of the time?”

Well, you’ve got to think of it this way. Do you think the Olympic Games generally have seven years to organise the Olympic Games? And, of course, it’s an enormous international event. Well, the Eurovision Song Contest is – is a pretty big event. It involves, as we’ve said, forty different countries. Sometimes, more. That’s forty different broadcasters from around Europe. And that is – that is eleven months, essentially, or even ten months to plan for the following year. Because, of course, the unique thing about the Eurovision Song Contest is that if you win it, you host it the following year. The winning broadcaster, and its broadcasters that compete broadcasters who are EBU members, public broadcasters like the BBC in the UK, SVT in Sweden, ARD in Germany, they win the contest as well as the song and the artist. And the trophy goes to the artist, of course, and the songwriters. But the broadcaster wins the right to host. So, they have ten months, really, to put it together, because we move into the arena the following year, in April. So, that we have to start the preparations that early.

So, what I do all that time is the moment we have a winner on Saturday, the 14th of May this year, and on the Saturday night of every year, we start work the following day on what we do next year. And we get together very quickly with the new broadcaster. And there are certain things that have to be done by certain points in the year, preparations in communications and social media. That’s things like announcing the host city, announcing the venue, the presenters of the show, the content of the show, ticket sales for the show. All of those sorts of things that are sort of the nuts and bolts.

But also with social media, we are keeping this brand and this competition alive year-round, because whilst we, of course, obtain millions more followers during the event weeks in May when people are watching the television and they’re aware of the show, we want to retain that. We want to retain those followers the rest of the year, and we want to engage them for the rest of the year. And that’s what we do with our social team. We are always active throughout the year using our archive using the sixty-seven years of Eurovision history that we now have, and also following the artists from recent years as well and just keeping that engagement going throughout the year.

CAT ANDERSON Wow. And there, I was maybe slightly at the start of this conversation, thinking, “This must be really a nice cushy job for a couple of months of the year.” But now, I’m wondering how you get anything done in such a short amount of time, because there’s so much to cover there. 

And as you rightly said, keeping the brand of Eurovision alive is such a huge thing, because fanship is massive in Eurovision. So, it’s something that people are as passionate as they would be for their favourite football team. Maybe more with Eurovision. And so, I wonder, on social media, is there a degree of diplomacy with that? You know, if you’re showing something from the archives, from one of the older winners, I guess, as Eurovision, you can’t show any bias.

DAVE GOODMAN Yes, absolutely. It’s almost like I look at it—. I—. My previous career before I did this was as a journalist, and I worked in politics, of course. And I see Eurovision sometimes like a general election in that you have different candidates and you have to make sure that you are fair and you are balanced and you will give as much airtime as you can to each of those candidates.

And, of course, the broadcasters around Europe have their own social media channels where they can promote their own artists. But we want to promote every artist equally. And so, we endeavour to do that during the competition period, which is from – really from December through to March, the songs are chosen. And from March, they have to be submitted. From March through to May, it’s a period where we have to be very, very aware of the amount of exposure we’re giving to each of the artists and each of the songs.

But you’re right. We get—. We have extremely active fandom, an extremely vocal fandom. And if there’s ever a slight mistake, which we try to avoid, they seize on it. They know everything.

And, of course, if we put out a video about Bulgaria, they’ll say, “Where’s the Serbia video?” So, there’s – there is that sense of fairness that we do build into our coverage and our content. And we do what we can to get it right. But there’s a lot of heritage to cover here. There’s a lot of songs and a lot of countries. Over fifty countries have taken part in Eurovision. Some of them don’t exist anymore. So, we have a lot of archive to explore. 

And making that archive relevant to a younger audience, because in a lot of countries, they think Eurovision is an old-fashioned TV show. It’s old. It’s dated. It’s for old people. It’s not anymore. Our social channels are dominated by sixteen- to twenty-four-year-olds. And that is why we’re live streaming on TikTok and why we’re on YouTube, because we know that young people don’t necessarily watch linear television so much. So, we want to reach those people, and, of course, make content for them that’s relevant about the artists and the songs of more recent years.

CAT ANDERSON I really love that you’re working with the artists to share their story a little bit more before an act comes on. And I mean, let’s be real, often, Graham Norton is chatting over it. So, we don’t even get that much of an opportunity to learn about the artists. But I wonder what you think about Måneskin, who won last year from Italy, had a huge social media following in advance, and they won because of the public vote.

So, for anyone who doesn’t know, Eurovision is there’s the song performances and then, there’s a period of voting where all of the different countries will vote for each other that, in more recent years, the public vote has come in, which is why the general public couldn’t vote for all of the different acts. And last year was a real moment where, with the public vote, everything turned completely upside down … 

DAVE GOODMAN Mmhmm. 

CAT ANDERSON … because Italy wasn’t doing that great, but suddenly they were streaks ahead …

DAVE GOODMAN Yeah.

CAT ANDERSON … of all of the other competition.

DAVE GOODMAN Well—.

CAT ANDERSON All of the other acts.

DAVE GOODMAN Well, we changed that in the last few years, the voting sequence, because it is a music competition. And the public, of course, are important and need – and need and should have their say. And that is why you saw last year, Italy, Måneskin, fifth, I think, if I’m right, in the jury vote. And once the televote had been delivered, they jumped to the top of the scoreboard. And they are one overall, because they have the most overall number of points from the juries and the televote. 

And that is why we changed the sequence, because you have that moment where you do not know until the very last vote is given who has won the Eurovision Song Contest. And Måneskin were fantastic winners for the Eurovision Song Contest, because already they had a social media presence, already they’d won San Remo, the big Italian music festival that’s the biggest TV show in Italy and the inspiration for the Eurovision Song Contest. So, it’s great to be back in Italy where it kind of all began.

They’d already had that success, and their song was already popular. But they used social media very effectively to promote their song. 

And streaming is massively important for Eurovision now. Songs come out in January, February, March time will gain ahead of steam on the streaming platforms. Because, again, once upon a time when I was a kid, you couldn’t hear these songs before the night of the show or maybe on a Sunday afternoon on BBC2 if you were lucky when they preview them. But now, of course, they’re everywhere. And that’s what we want. We want them to be hits. We want people to know these songs. And we encourage the broadcasters to do good, strong, engaging social media around their act, because it not only creates a buzz in their own country around their song, it then means that the people who are behind the song of their own country watch the TV show and engage with our platforms as well.

So, it’s massively important, social media, for all of the artists taking part. So, we do what we can to encourage. We do workshops, in fact, with our participating broadcasters. With the platforms. We did them with Metta this year. With TikTok. We did them with Spotify and also with Google as well on best practice on those channels to help them promote their own artists and their own songs.

CAT ANDERSON Well, I experienced watching Eurovision in years gone by where you would only be introduced to these acts on that night.

DAVE GOODMAN Mmhmm.

CAT ANDERSON But if you can have a favourite going into it or, like, you know, you’ve had a good look at who all the finalists are, that makes you super excited to see them, you know. And, like, let’s be real, if you’ve seen one country’s loads of times, they’re going to be maybe the person you’re more likely to vote for at the end of the night.

DAVE GOODMAN Yeah. Totally. And, actually, what we find now with Eurovision, and this is why it’s changed as an event, is that the songs are not as, shall we say, instant as they possibly were in the days where people remember Boom Bang a Bang, and Diggy-Loo Diggy-Ley. And – and when songs had to be very, very melodic, very, very up-tempo. Or ballads did very well or sung in a language that was widely understood from around Europe, and why we saw most of the winners in the first, you know, few decades of the contest being English language or French language songs. That’s not the same anymore. And what we’ve seen in the last few years is – is broadcast is taking a chance, is broadcasters sending authentic artists and songs from those artists that they believe in. 

And Måneskin was a prime example of that. That’s the music they make. That’s the music they perform. They didn’t make that song for the Eurovision Song Contest. They didn’t write it to appeal to the entirety of Europe. They took it to a music competition in Italy, where that was the music they wanted to bring, and they won that competition, and they brought that to Eurovision fully believing in that song, fully invested in that song. And because of Måneskin and – and because of artists like Daði Freyr Freya from Iceland, who had a huge viral hit with Think About Things in 2020. We didn’t have a contest that year. Because, of course, with COVID, we had to cancel the very first and hopefully last time. But that song became a huge hit through social media, through Spotify, through the streaming channels. 

So, these songs live outside Eurovision. And because these songs do well at Eurovision now, if you’ve not seen Eurovision for years, watch it now, because it is not the show of your childhood. However fabulous that was, it’s totally different now. And because those acts are successful, the following year, the broadcasters take more chances. A lot of these artists already have social media followings.

And, in fact, this year, the United Kingdom’s act, Sam Ryder, is plucked straight from TikTok. His success is entirely from TikTok. He has thirteen million followers on TikTok globally. He is the most followed musical artists in Britain on TikTok. And he is going to sing for the UK at Eurovision. And he’s not going because he has a song he wrote for Eurovision. He’s going, because he loves Eurovision. He’s been given a platform in front of two hundred million people. He already has a platform in front of millions of people, because he’s created it for himself on TikTok. But here’s a new audience he could find through television and through the Eurovision Song Contest who might not have found him already. 

He sees the benefits of that. The British Broadcasting Corporation, the BBC, see the benefits in that. And that’s where we’re going now. You know, songs are coming. Artists are coming from different areas. They’re not coming from the traditional backgrounds that we used to see. And, therefore, social media is massively important for the success.

And if you’ve heard these songs, some of them require a number of lessons. Like, all songs, the more you hear them, the more you love them. And some of them are not in your face Boom Bang a Bang-ing at you, because, actually, that doesn’t make for a great song contest, but it also, musically, isn’t relevant. So, actually, yeah, there’s pop. Yeah, there’s some fun. But there’s a lot of introspective songs in this year’s competition. There’s a lot of melancholy. There’s a lot of—. I think somebody called them sad bangers, I think, is a good expression to use. And sad boys songs. And things like that, you know. And – and sort of music that Billie Eilish is producing. Eurovision has always reflected the music world around it. And, sometimes, it was a bit behind the times. But, now, totally reflecting what’s in the charts and what’s successful internationally.

CAT ANDERSON Now, here at Sprout Social, we know that social media is a wild and wonderful beast. It can surprise and delight, but it can also confuse and perplex even the hardiest of social media users. Who better to turn to for help than our social media expert, Stacey Wright, who’s here to answer your questions over a cup of tea and some biscuits in the part of the show we like to call Sound Advice.

STACEY WRIGHT Right. I’ve got my cup of tea, and I’ve got my letters, which can only mean it’s time for us to take a break and cosy down together. This is the part of the podcast where I, your social media agony aunt, Stacey, guide you, our dear listeners, through your trickiest digital dilemmas.

Right. Let me see what social media conundrums you’ve sent my way today.

“Dear Stacey,

I’m really struggling to get timely approvals or, sometimes, any approvals for the social content for our heritage fashion brand. The go-to for our creative director is big, luxurious, and cinematic content assets whilst my brand manager would like to see more sharper, punchier, creative content that provokes comment and interaction, trying to push the brand into a new era.

I am stuck in the middle, unable to be reactive. I can’t jump on any trends, because both need to approve the content I suggest, and they just can’t see eye-to-eye. How do I get everybody on the same page and, ultimately, get more social-friendly content out onto our pages faster?

Fashionably frustrated, Rina.”

Rina, so, I know first-hand what it’s like being at the bottom of a creative funnel when you’re relying on a full design team to actually give you that content production and deliver your KPIs. 

The first thing I would say is education. Use analytics and competitive analysis and any industry reports you can get your hands on to set the scene. If you’re not pleasing your social audiences, that can be damaging to the brand vision as a whole.

Make sure your creative briefs are backed up by these insights and start talking about the social networks they are active in as if they’re different global locales, which require a different cultural sensitivity or relevance. What I mean by that is social managers need to be multilingual, not just in the traditional sense, but also need to translate that creative brand concept into a language and culture of the networks that it’s going to be published to. So, is it in a format and a tone that is going to resonate with the audience on each of those different social networks?

Ask your creative director: Would you use the spring-summer campaign imagery in August, say, in Oceania markets? No. Because it’s not culturally relevant for them at that time. So, why create wide-format cinematic contact for TikTok, say?

Most importantly, get a formal approval workflow in progress. This communicates to the two managers that their opinions are important, but so are your timelines. And close the loop with data lead feedback. What worked well? What withers in the feeds, and what is actually never even seen by those social audience? This lays the foundations for test-and-learn approach to social content that is imperative when we work in these ever-shifting spaces.

So, Rina, I hope some of these ideas can help you get heritage trending in new ways for you. Until next time, listeners. Stay strong and stay social. And now back to the interview.

CAT ANDERSON As I mentioned at the start, we’re recording this a few weeks before the final. But the buzz is already starting. And I have seen a few articles where people are now trying to say, like, “This is who we think is going to win. This is what we think the top ten is going to be” based on YouTube views or based on followers. I think that’s kind of an interesting way to look at it. I’d love to hear what your thoughts are on that kind of approach of people here now you’re trying to exploit that close relationship between what happens on stage and what happens on social media to actually project the results.

DAVE GOODMAN I think there’s a lot to be said for that, because, as we’ve said, if the songs are out months in advance, and they’re on our YouTube channel as soon as we – we get them from the broadcasters in mid-March, when they have to submit, and, of course, then they’re on Spotify and some of them, you know, on Spotify and other streaming platforms for months before that. So, they might well have been a hit in their country already. 

And yes, you can see how many millions of a song has had on YouTube. You can see how many streams it’s had on Spotify and the other platforms. So, it is a good indicator, but not the only indicator. Because, interestingly, why Eurovision is still special and why it’s still a show to watch, and it’s a TV show, is that you can take a song that is very popular as a radio song and you can put it on stage, and it might not work. So, you can look at what’s happening now on social media. And we do ourselves, because we also would like to know where we might be going next year. We would like to prepare certain broadcasters for that inevitable or possible win. So, we look at all this as well. Like, everybody watching this show is as in the dark as everybody else about what will resonate on those nights, the semi-finals.

Remember there are two semi-finals and the grand final. But those songs might resonate in a different way than you think. Because you’ve seen a music video. You’ve only heard a song. You haven’t seen it performed. So, yeah. It’s fascinating.

And what we do notice and what we’re looking at a lot more is, after the semi-finals, where are those songs being streamed? Where are those songs now popular? And they do give you, certainly in the event week, a good indication of where the public, not the music, not the juries, but we obviously have from the semi-finals, we know what the jury results are, but we don’t publicly publish them until after the whole show is completed. So, it doesn’t prejudice the grand final, of course. But we do get to see, after the semi-finals, what songs are resonating. And, sometimes, it’s a surprise. Sometimes, it’s, “Wow. Oh, that’s—. Yeah. Well, of course. Look at the staging in that song. That’s why that song has done really well, and it’s lifted that song.”

So, yeah. It’s a better guide than we’ve ever had before. It won’t tell you exactly who is going to win. And, sometimes, the songs that haven’t done that well prior to the show do well, because of the TV performance and, following the show, become huge. And I think I am right in saying Ukraine’s song last year was, yes, certainly, well thought of, but became massive after the show.

CAT ANDERSON I was just thinking that when you were talking about how the voting system has changed. If I may give you a compliment, I have not realised how perfect the voting system is now, because then it means that you’re giving the general public, actually, the space to have conversations on social media as well and to react to things. Because, again, pre-social media, you might’ve got together with a group of friends. You might’ve gone to a bar. You might be watching it with your family. So, you’re having a limited conversation where everyone’s like, “Oh, my God. That was amazing” or “Oh, that was awful.” And that will influence you. But now, with social media, that’s exploded out to this huge level.

DAVE GOODMAN Mmhmm.

CAT ANDERSON You know, people are watching it one eye on the screen, one eye watching the Twitter reaction …

DAVE GOODMAN Yeah.

CAT ANDERSON … which can also help then make that public vote or the televote absolutely crazy. So, I feel like that – the way that that’s been set, so there is time for that conversation to happen on social media and then potentially impact the vote at the end. That’s perfect …

DAVE GOODMAN Mmhmm.

CAT ANDERSON … ’cause it means you’re having that conversation with millions of people.

DAVE GOODMAN Yeah. Exactly. And that whole thing of joining audiences together in different countries that used to be only done through the television where you had that sensation that you were watching something that was being watched in tens of different countries, that now is on social. That conversation. You can connect with those people. Twitter is awash with comments particularly, because that’s the type of platform Twitter is. It’s where you give instant reaction. So, Twitter is massively important to us.

But certain platforms are good for certain things. And, obviously, we have comments on the YouTube live stream, and we have comments all running through all the videos that we publish on YouTube. But then with TikTok, of course, we want to have fun with the artists. And our live stream on TikTok this year, we’ll also provide something exclusive where we’re going to have backstage footage of the artists coming on and off the stage. So, we’re going to be able to see what they look like and their—. When I say it out loud, it’s probably not something that’s appealing to them. But their anxiety, their nerves, their fear, their excitement before they go on stage …

CAT ANDERSON Mmhmm.

DAVE GOODMAN … and when they come off. And that will be exclusively on TikTok. So, there, again, you will be able to comment on the live stream on TikTok as well. And then, of course, on Facebook and Instagram, you can interact there as well. We’re going to be doing Instagram lives. We’re, of course, going to have loads of video on stories. We have an older audience on Facebook, but we have a very engaged audience and a huge reach on Facebook. It’s our most followed platform, and we use that to really use as an information platform, but also as an engagement platform, because you can comment under the articles. But that sort of instant reply that you get, and certainly on the nights of the event, is really, really important to us.

And – and I think it’s really important every year. We aspire, and we are ambitious to work with all the platforms to take what they have and make our experience, our engagement better by working with them. 

And one of the other things, actually, we’re doing this year for the first time is fantasy Eurovision, which is actually an Italian concept that they do with San Remo. And we’re going to be doing that on Facebook where you can choose your own successes that Eurovision choose between the different songs and—. Yeah. Essentially, an interactive fantasy Eurovision experience. So—. And I can see your excitement. So, it’s all about change, and it’s all about, every year, making our offer different. And we are—. Because we are a television show that changes and we want to be—. And we are the biggest, best, most technologically advanced entertainment show in the world, we have the same aspirations and the same ambitions for our social channels. And every year, we want to – to make what we produce better, more engaging and get more and more followers of this fantastic event.

CAT ANDERSON I am still trying to process fantasy Eurovision, which, as a person who’s not so into sports, my jaw hit the deck there. It’s like, “Yes. Finally. Something” …

DAVE GOODMAN Exactly.

CAT ANDERSON … “that I can get on board with.”

It’s really great to hear the spirit of experimentation as well. And as you say …

DAVE GOODMAN Mmhmm.

CAT ANDERSON … knowing which type of audiences are on different platforms and, like, bringing that experience in new and wonderful ways to them. So, it sounds like an awful lot of work.

DAVE GOODMAN Yes, it is.

CAT ANDERSON I can’t wait to try it. Like, see it all.

DAVE GOODMAN It is an extremely huge body of work. And we don’t have an enormous team, but about twenty-two, twenty-three, give or take working full-time or part-time, during the event weeks in the host city. And that’s producing thousands of hours of content for multiple platforms.

And, of course, there’s a new platform every year. I mean, Reddit. Not a new platform, but we’re doing a lot more on Reddit this year. We’ve just done fan favourites on Reddit. You know, what are your fan favourites? And we’ve made a Spotify playlist, because we’re on Spotify with playlist of the artists, their favourite music, the songs that inspire them. So, it’s everywhere. I mean, when I talk about it, I can’t believe we’re doing all this.

CAT ANDERSON Yeah.

DAVE GOODMAN But we – but we are so passionate about this, because people are not on every social platform. You know this. They’re not going to see everything you do. They might only be on Facebook. They might only use Twitter. So, we have to provide an offer, and we want to provide an offer on all the platforms that is appropriate to that platform and those audiences, so, we can share the joy of Eurovision everywhere we possibly can.

CAT ANDERSON Oh, wow. I—. Joy is the right word, isn’t it? I don’t know about you, but I now just want to go and put on that Spotify playlist. I want to get ready for Eurovision now. I want to go and start thinking about what I’m going to wear or who we’re going to have around for the party. It’s just so lovely to have something that is so joyous, you know, and something that’s so open to everyone, because I feel like it is accessible. And the work that you’re doing is so great at taking that night and making it way bigger …

DAVE GOODMAN Mmhmm.

CAT ANDERSON … way more accessible to so many people. So, fair play to you, Dave.

DAVE GOODMAN Thanks.

CAT ANDERSON And we have one final question …

DAVE GOODMAN Mmhmm.

CAT ANDERSON … which we ask everybody on this podcast, which is: If you’re to stop following everyone that you follow on the Eurovision account, which would be the single account that you would continue to follow?

DAVE GOODMAN Well, that’s difficult.

CAT ANDERSON Yeah. It is.

DAVE GOODMAN That’s like choosing between your children, isn’t it? Who’s your favourite child? I think ultimately Eurovision is about the songs, and it is about music, so, I would say in terms of the one platform that I would continue to follow would be YouTube. So, all the shows and all the songs can be viewed there. And it is ultimately a TV experience. A visual and audio experience. And, again, I’m not choosing this based on anything other than the importance of the music and – and seeing the music as well as hearing the music. But it’s a terrible question. And we would never …

CAT ANDERSON Sorry.

DAVE GOODMAN … never want to – never want to cast out our other children. They are all as precious to us as – as – as each other.

CAT ANDERSON Oh, well. Thank you so much, Dave. I feel like I’m obsessed with you now. I want to talk to you about who’s going to be in your Eurovision – fantasy Eurovision. Thank you so much for taking the time to talk to us today. I have loved this conversation.

DAVE GOODMAN You’re really welcome. And I hope you very much enjoy this year’s show and also all the stuff we’re doing on social. And we can come back and talk about that another time. But yeah. It’s great to have someone who’s passionate about Eurovision. I always see myself as a bit of an evangelist for Eurovision. It’s good to find people who – who don’t need persuading. So, it’s been lovely speaking to you.

CAT ANDERSON You, too. 

You’ve been listening to Social Creatures with me, Cat Anderson. Many thanks to today’s guest and to Sprout Social for making this podcast possible. Make sure you join me for the rest of the series by subscribing on your favourite podcast platform where you can tune into a new episode every two weeks.

You can continue the conversation around today’s episode by getting in touch on our social media at @SproutSocial or by sending your social media quandaries to our agony aunt, Stacey, by emailing soundadvice@sproutsocial.com.

Thanks for listening, and catch you in two weeks.

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