The Voice will use animations from a so-called Tumblr artist during finalist Christina Grimmie's performance of Lorde's "Team" on Tuesday night.
The graphics, created by Tumblr user Cindy Suen, will appear on screens behind Grimmie well before host Carson Daly announces the season six winner. The Voice is trying this new visual approach at a time when stage productions on TV singing contests get more elaborate with every passing season and very little time to execute.
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"It's like pulling together the olympics every week in a matter of five days," Sima Sistani, Tumblr's media director, told Mashable. "The Voice has leveraged social media in lots of different ways, and Tumblr is a natural home for social TV."
Here's a preview of how the animations, inspired by lyrics from "Team," will look:
Meanwhile, The Voice's Tumblr page will simultaneously share Dave Grey's GIF art, specifically made just for Grimmie's "Team" performance:
The animations will likely speak to Grimmie's digitally savvy young fan base, which has swelled enormously since 2009 when she began uploading YouTube videos of herself performing cover songs on a keyboard in her bedroom.
It's no surprise NBC's social powerhouse The Voice is experimenting with onscreen social media integrations. They've routinely infused the show with digital elements such as the #VoiceSave, a Twitter voting initiative where viewers get to save a contestant from being eliminated. The #VoiceSave got Grimmie into the finale.
Additionally, The Voice counts iTunes sales of studio versions of live performances as votes. Earlier this season, Grimmie's version of a song from rapper Drake (embedded below) soared to No. 4 on the iTunes top-songs chart.
Tumblr previously partnered with networks to get content from its blogging platform on TV for broadcasts such as the Super Bowl and the Academy Awards.
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