Pop Idol meets mobile marketing
This is so amazing.
We all know the Pop Idol, American Idol, China Idol etc phenomenon all around the world. A huge extravaganza combining TV visibility and mobile phone voting as its interactivity. And you think they have milked this format for all its worth.
Think again.
If ever you squirmed at some non-professional singer doing some horrible rendition of a musical classic, clearly beyond his or her abilities, and thought this is as bad as it gets.
Think again.
We have found the most real of reality TV, even more popular pop idol than Pop Idol. You’d think if this concept has the word Karaoke in it, it has to come from Japan or Korea, but no. The service they call Mobile Karaoke. The “common man” Idol contest, on mobile phones, was introduced in Finland this January.
Elisa Corporation (my former employer by the way) - the guys who launched GSM into the world (and SMS) - back when their mobile arm was called Radiolinja - was a sponsor of the Finnish Idol show on TV. They got together with the advertising agency TaivasEgo and developed a concept to do a parallel, truly amateour version of the Pop Idol contest. This “Jokamiehen Idols” (literally “the common man’s Idols") contest was based on mobile phones.
You called a special number to join in the mobile karaoke. You sang your song into the recording. You then listened to it, that you were satisfied with it. Then you entered your song. And others would listen to the songs and vote.
Conceptually this is brilliant. And what of the usage? Finland has a population of only 5 million people. 1,862 brave Finns sang songs into Mobile Karaoke to join into this common man’s Idols contest. 150,000 separate individuals called in to listen to these songs, to vote on them ! And the whole activity generated 1.95 MILLION separate listening/voting sessions in Finland. More than the total traffic generated by the voting activities of the “real” Finnish Idols show on TV. And obviously congratulations to Mea Karppinen, the lady who won this contest.
On a personal note. I can think of few things more horrible, than listening to random non-professional singers doing their Karaoke via the phone. To my ears, the sounds of skinning a live cat is probably less painful. But that is not the point. First, we know reality TV is a hit with the masses. Everywhere. Then we know that users want to participate (web), to create content (blog) and to share those (podcasting) etc. Is this not the obvious marriage of mobile phone services and TV content, in yet another variant.
Expect this to be a big hit everywhere. From now on, why would any Pop Idols format be run without the citizen karaoke variant on mobiles. It is my absolute fave service of March 2006
1.95 Million votes out of a country of 5 Million people in one month. This will be enormous everywhere this year.
Cross-posted from the Communities Dominate Brands blog