The program “Dancing with the Stars” (DWTS) saw ten (10) celebrities teamed up with professional dancers and competing against each other by performing either Ballroom or Latin dance routine/s. Each week the viewers at home were invited to vote for their favorite celebrity via SMS or IVR to keep them in the competition.

Following on from the success of DWTS Series Four (4), the Seven Network was looking to leverage the interactive media channels to retain and attain viewer ratings and participation in Series Five.

As a network, their primary objective was to increase ratings whilst encouraging and demonstrating increased participation and deriving ‘more’ value from the viewers.

m.Net developed a flexible, innovative and productive outcome for DWTS that delivered maximum interactivity and flexibility for Seven that has become part of a powerful tool set that is being used across the entire Seven voting/competition landscape.

Activity

For the first time seen on Australian Reality Television

• Each viewer which voted via the SMS channel was given the opportunity to agree to Opt-in to Sevens opt-in database to receive future communications for the Seven Network.

• All subsequent votes from the viewers MSISDN were randomly delivered a personalised message from their celebrity to inject some personalisation on the back of their vote.

• This created a heightened users experience for those viewers which vote numerous times. 

TV Integration

The Integrity of the viewer votes is paramount for a reality TV program in line with the speed in which the data can be reported. m.Net created a secure web reporting interface which allowed access to the following integrated SMS &IVR data real-time;

• Voting Rank of each celebrity

• Voting Breakdown per week

• Percentage of total votes per celebrity (per week)

• Invalid SMS and IVR votes (per week).

• Offline SMS and IVR votes (per week)

• Opt-in data (per week)

This online interface also calculated the ranking of each celebrity and generated the final weekly result (from the viewer’s votes and the judge’s scores).

This information was used to decide the eliminated celebrity and communicated to the producers of DWTS during the live telecast of each weekly broadcast.

Highlights

An Australian FIRST to offer an OPT-IN channel for viewers which participate in a prime time TV voting program.

• The main purpose of the OPT-IN channel was to build a database of mobile phone numbers. Client expectation were exceed in terms of the valid opt-ins acquired

• In the first week 22.62% of participating viewers agreed to Opt-in.

• The First SMS response channel in a high-volume voting service

• Each response was varied with rotating messages to provide personality and advance the emotional connection with the celebrity.

• Sevens first tactical SMS activity using the DWTS Opt-in database.

• Delivery of an SMS message to motivate entry to an online competition.

• This communication resulted in a successful conversion rate – 17% of participants which participated in the competition came from the DWTS opt in Database.