Best New Artist has been the only live voted category of the VMAs for years, giving fans the chance to crown the biggest names in music with one of their first awards. We challenged ourselves to mark the 40th Anniversary of the VMAs by creating a groundbreaking and global way for fans to live vote. Our goal was to find an accessible, reliable and innovative way to make the vote happen on a global scale and what better way to do that than make the category votable on WhatsApp, the most-used messaging app in the world.
For years, the VMA Best New Artist category winner was determined by website fan voting in combination with a real-time “hashtag battle” during the VMA live broadcast.
In 2023 we switched things up by allowing fans to vote in real-time with an AR lens and saw triple
digit year over year growth. Why would we switch things up again after such a successful execution? Because we love a challenge!
Immediately we knew WhatsApp was the ideal destination for an award show with a global fan base given its place as the most-used messaging app in the world. However, voting on this scale would be a challenge and a first for an award show so we had our work cut out for ourselves. We partnered with Telescope to create a user friendly, text-based voting experience that could deliver real-time results during
the live VMAs broadcast.
On VMA morning we simultaneously launched the Best New Artist finalists and WhatsApp voting experience. Fans accessed voting on WhatsApp via QR code and direct link, where they were given the option to vote for one of the three finalists through a multiple choice tap to text user experience.
With a mere 10-hour voting window, we exerted every effort to reach fans in as many ways and places as possible. This included promoting the Best New Artist voting QR code across MTV.com and all MTV and VMA social handles, including Instagram, Facebook and X. WhatsApp also promoted voting from their own IG, Threads and X handles. We also featured the QR code on-air with linear hits during the VMA Pre-Show and Main Show.
The Best New Artist voting experience on WhatsApp was a first-of-its-kind execution, and we walked away with year-over-year success stories:
- +104% Best New Artist vote totals year over year
- +19% live Best New Artist votes year over year compared to 2023's AR voting lens
It was the first-ever global award show voting experience on WhatsApp, and received press coverage to boot!
