Jason Letkiewicz

CREDIT: Creative Director

CREDIT: CREATIVE DIRECTOR

For three years The Oscars have grown in both ratings and social engagement. Reversing a decades-long decline.

2022

2023

2024

-21M multiplatform viewers, hitting a 4-year high.

-#1 Entertainment program year to date in social video consumption.

CREDIT: CREATIVE DIRECTOR

CREDIT: SENIOR CREATIVE

What do you do when your award show hosts only have a 2-hour window for a TV and photo shoot?

The MTV Real-Time Teleprompter. 

We fed Dwayne Johnson and Kevin Hart a series of live questions via social media that they could riff off of in real time, not just for our cameras, but for 10 livestreaming phones posting to 10 different livestream platforms

The 40-minute livestream got an audience of over 4 million, from which we were able to make over 30 shorter pieces of promotional content, along with a big splash for the Movie Awards online and in the press. The campaign was also credited by TIME magazine for making America dumber.

CREDIT: CREATIVE DIRECTOR

The last job I did at MTV was creative direct a youth voting initiative refresh. The campaign went on to become the most successful in decades.

THE CHALLENGE: Choose Or Lose didn’t speak to MTV’s audience like it did previous generations. After electing Barack Obama young people learned that just choosing a president isn’t enough. To enact change in America you need to be engaged in midterms and down-ballot elections.

INSIGHT: Research showed that friendship is one of the most powerful motivators for civic action - peer to peer influence is stronger than any ad. Instead of commanding our audience to vote, we gave them the tools and resources to turn out their own friends.

THE BIG IDEA: We made voting into a social event. Because voting should be fun, easy, and a part of the milestones already happening in our lives from prom to graduation to birthdays. +1 The Vote is an invitation to shape the future. So who's your +1?

EXECUTION: The campaign rolled out in two phases: registration and turnout. We launched during our biggest night of the year, the VMAs, with an innovative, first-of-its-kind digital buddy system that enabled our audience to identify and message friends who aren't registered to vote. Celebrity talent tagged their +1 via social media shoutouts, also engaging their unique fanbases in the challenge. To encourage voter turnout, we teamed up with #VoteTogether to give away voting party grants in 50 states, which brought out more than 20,000 people. We capped off these parties with a massive MTV party at Miami Dade College in Florida.

RESULTS: The campaign’s success made +1 The Vote the ongoing voter initiative for all of Viacom’s Youth & Entertainment group.

- Over a three-month span, the AP saw a 20% increase in youth who said they are "extremely" likely to encourage a friend to vote (31% in June to 37% in October).

- Of those who heard of MTV's +1 the Vote, 66% will try to encourage a friend to vote in the midterms (vs 38% of those who haven't heard of the campaign).

- MTV was part of a chorus of voices that supercharged youth turnout – 31% of youth (ages 18-29) turned out to vote in the 2018 midterms – the highest turnout in 25 years.

-Shorty Awards Winner for Best Call To Action.

In the first 3 months the campaign garnered:

- Over 140 press hits

- Amassed over 80.5M impressions

- Over 400K web page views

CREDIT: DIRECTOR & CREATIVE DIRECTOR

It's back. The biggest celebs, the most iconic performances, and of course the screaming fans in the heart of TSQ.  So in the spirit of TRL, we built a 10x10 soundproof booth right on the red carpet of the VMAs so celebrities could come through and say whatever was on their mind. 

RESULTS:

PromaxBDA BRONZE: Art Direction & Design-Program Promotional Campaign

Uptick in teen viewers for the network: 93 percent bump in the P12-17 share compared to the previous four weeks.

TRL has ranked in the top 10 most social shows every day -- occasionally besting the likes of Jimmy Kimmel Live! and The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon (according to Nielsen).

Off-linear boost of over 30 percent

Nielsen social guide top 10 almost every night across all television broadcast and cable.

CREDIT: CREATIVE DIRECTOR + SENIOR WRITER / PRODUCER

Welcome to the scenery of the crime.

CREDIT: DIRECTOR & SENIOR CREATIVE

Welcome to Hollywood's House Party.

RESULTS:

The #1 most social non-sports program of the day

+89 percent spike in organic conversation 

41 million video streams, up 40 percent

35.2 million streams on Facebook, up 92 percent 

The number-one global trending hashtag on Twitter for 8hrs on show day.

Teen viewership grew 2 percent among teens and was up double-digits in share (up single digits in P12-34 demo).

CREDIT: SENIOR WRITER / PRODUCER

CREDIT: DIRECTOR, SENIOR CREATIVE, CO-DP, & EDITOR

CREDIT: CREATIVE DIRECTOR

VENDOR: MENTALITY

CREDIT: DIRECTOR, SENIOR CREATIVE, DP, & EDITOR

MTV has a long history of amazing iconic art. Every now and then they set aside small budgets for us to go crazy with the M logo. These are some of my favorites.

CREDIT: SENIOR WRITER / PRODUCER

The world had more to think about in 2020 than who will win an Emmy – so we leaned into that with our host Jimmy Kimmel. The very real challenges of shooting at the height of Covid inspired the perfect comedic relief and created a series of ads that were unique, timely, and promised a much-needed reinvention of TV’s most iconic award show.

RESULTS:

In a year of industry-wide award show YOY viewership losses, The Emmys significantly outperformed all of its broadcast peers by double digits.

GOLDEN GLOBES -63%

OSCARS -56%

BILLBOARD -54%

GRAMMYS -51%

AMAs -50%

CMA AWARDS -37%

EMMYS -9%

source: The Hollywood Reporter

CREDIT: DIRECTOR, SENIOR CREATIVE, & EDITOR

When MTV first acquired Catfish it was a Sundance darling and a cultural touchstone. 7 seasons later, it was time for a creative refresh. Our teams big realization was that everyone is guilty of a little lying on social media and nobody wants to admit it. In a post-truth age that is dominated by fake news, it's time for all of us to get honest.

To capture Nev and Max at their most honest, we interviewed them with an Erroll Morris inspired interrotron. Their candid responses were then undercut with VFX face swapping as a reminder that anyone can be anyone on the internet.

On social our team kicked off the premiere with a Facebook Live that generated over 578K views. Fans were sent personal video messages, and they loved the attention. We live-tweeted and engaged with fans for hours during the Catfish marathon and straight through to the new episode, hyping up the Twitter audience for the premiere. We had new sneak peeks, New Years workout resolutions to stick to and plenty of messages from our hosts to make Catfish premiere day truly feel like a can’t-miss event.

RESULTS:

PromaxBDA Hot Spot

Season average ratings up 6% in the P18-49 demo over previous season.

#1 most social non-sports cable, prime time program for it's premiere night.

#Catfish became the #1 trending hashtag in the US.

Up 122% in unique authors on Twitter from last season’s premiere.

CREDIT: CREATIVE DIRECTOR

RESULTS

CREDIT: SENIOR WRITER / PRODCER

CREDIT: SENIOR CREATIVE

One of MTV's biggest pro-social campaigns and the first to tackle microaggressions. My biggest contribution was coming with the name, branding, and setting the tone for the campaign through early promos. The work we did regarding Ferguson at the VMAs became one of MTV's biggest stories of the year.

Rollingstone

AdWeek

Variety

Buzzfeed

USA Today

Huffington Post

Complex

Uproxx

Bustle

The Onion

CREDIT: SENIOR WRITER / PRODUCER

CREDIT: SENIOR CREATIVE

The VMAs are MTV's biggest night. This year we brought it into a new era by reinventing the Moonman into the Moonperson because anyone of us could be under that helmet. It's the one night of the year where pop culture can change forever in an instant. So brace for impact.

RESULTS:

PromaxBDA GOLD - Multimedia-Seasonal/Special Event Program Campaign

PromaxBDA BRONZE - Marketing Creativity-Live Event Campaign

On linear, MTV VMAs beat the Game of Thrones finale with key teen viewers by +43% and ranked #1 in time period with Teens, P18-24, and W12-34.

VMAs dominated Twitter social conversation. Trending globally for 13 hours and in the US for 12 hours

#1 from 7pm – 11pm when the show was live, beating the GOT finale. 

At its peak, the VMAs had 8 out of 10 trending topics in US

CREDIT: DIRECTOR, SENIOR CREATIVE, & EDITOR

Woodies are where you hear it first and feel it first. Rick Ross's journey from a young performer on the show to it's iconic host embodied that message more than anything we could write. While shooting, the buildings fire marshal came to shut us down. I invited him to go over and ask Rick to stop smoking. He declined.

RESULTS:

Nearly double the ratings over the previous years show.

CREDIT: SENIOR WRITER / PRODUCER

One small town is the new home to television’s biggest mystery. When a little girl appears out of nowhere with no name or memories the local police chief takes her into her family. Whatever you think you know about her… nothing is as it seems.

RESULTS

Emergence was the #3 new show of the year and was the only show in L+7 to double both its 18-49 rating (0.8 to 1.6) and total audience (4.12 million to 8.44 million).

CREDIT: DIRECTOR, SENIOR CREATIVE, & EDITOR

John Favreau brought Shannara to MTV and we launched it with the networks biggest marketing campaign of all time.

RESULTS:

Over 7 million people watched the pilot in the first week.

CREDIT: DIRECTOR

We made these for Blinker on a small budget in FL. We fought off homeowners associations and hurricane weather because we like a challenge. Premiered on Monday Night Football and got us an Emmy so the hard work paid off.

RESULTS:

Suncoast Emmy Winner - Best Commerical

CREDIT: DIRECTOR, SENIOR CREATIVE, & EDITOR

Wrongful incarceration is way more common than you think. To make audiences care about MTV's new social justice show, we first had to make them care about the issue itself. We dug through piles research to pull out some shocking new stats that revealed just how personal this issue really is for us all. 

CREDIT: DIRECTOR, SENIOR CREATIVE, & EDITOR

The return of Unplugged is about huge talent in an intimate setting. So we stripped everything away and let the artists be raw and real as the brand.

CREDIT: CREATIVE

In season 4, fans were reeling from the death of a major character. This campaign honored that loss and got fans ready to push forward together. 

CREDIT: DIRECTOR, SENIOR CREATIVE, DP, & EDITOR

Combo spot messaging is pretty straightforward. So we took the opportunity to do the opposite of that.

CREDIT: CREATIVE DIRECTOR & DIRECTOR

CREDIT: DIRECTOR & EDITOR

On this shoot we had access to $65 million dollar condos, but somehow couldn't afford a trained dog. We rolled with it and created Corcoran's most viewed video of all time with over 1,000,000 unpaid streams.

CREDIT: DIRECTOR, SENIOR CREATIVE, CO-DP, & EDITOR

If you want to talk openly about HIV prevention I believe you need to use the language of social media. We fought really hard to do this shoot as a crowd sourced project at a time when that was unheard of. The only reason we got our way was because hurricane Sandy wiped out NYC and made a traditional shoot impossible. It was my first paid job out of college and it got me an Emmy nomination. I may be the only person on the planet who's directing career can be credited to a hurricane.

RESULTS:

Emmy Nomination - National Creative Arts
PromaxBDA GOLD
Creativity International Award SILVER
CTAM Mark Award GOLD

CREDIT: CREATIVE

CREDIT: DIRECTOR, SENIOR CREATIVE, EDITOR, & VO

CREDIT: SENIOR CREATIVE & EDITOR

Fun fact. I used to live where this show was shot. It's nothing like this.

RESULTS:

This teaser premiered at the Movie & TV Awards and the audience reaction escalated the show to a top priority for the network. The resulting campaign helped create MTVs first new hit show in years. 

CREDIT: DIRECTOR, CREATIVE DIRECTOR, & EDITOR

We made this for the Boy Scouts right out of college for a $6,000 budget. Years later I'm watching the Super Bowl and my phone starts ringing off my hook. Jeep used our footage in their 4x4 spot. I'm afraid to calculate how much it cost them to air because I saw 0% of that.