The MTV EMA is the world's biggest night in music, and while this year's show brought together some of the hottest names in music—Nicki Minaj, Ed Sheeran, Ariana Grande, Ozzy Osbourne, and more—it also celebrated local music acts from around the world. Bibi Zhou, a Chinese singer/songwriter, was crowned the winner of Worldwide Act, a multi-phase campaign that capitalizes on fans' passion for music and their countries.
This year, we expanded the scope of Worldwide Act in order to engage EMA fans earlier in the campaign, empowering them to get involved in the nomination process and letting them know their voices were heard. We did this by inviting them to fill the fifth nomination spot for their local category via Twitter hashtag voting. The results showed us that fans had something to say: We saw 18.9 million social votes in less than a week's time. Fan groups even took to the streets to distribute flyers with voting hashtags! Leveraging the global reach of the MTV brand—3.3 million fans of MTV EMA social platforms and 62 million fans of the MTV brand internationally—we mobilized our passionate, opinionated, music-loving audience to join in the conversation and get invested in the campaign.
Local voting has been a distinctive feature of the MTV EMA since 2000, when we had 8 Europe-based local categories (e.g. Best French Act, Best Nordic Act). Over the years, it's evolved into the Worldwide Act race, with 35 local races spanning the globe and culminating in 1 ultimate winner. It's the Worldwide Act category and the EMA's global reach that set it apart from other music award shows. The voting process typically spans three phases: First, fans vote for a local winner in their country or region. These winners then go up against other local winners in their region. The winners at this stage produce 10 official Worldwide Act nominees. The winner of the Worldwide Act accepts the award during the EMA live show, shining a light on the global nature of the EMAs that sets it apart from other award shows.
This year, we made the category even more unique. About nine weeks before the show, the MTV EMA announced a brand-new voting phase for its established Worldwide Act category: the pre-nomination or 'wild card' phase. While MTV selected four of the five local nominees, fans voted via hashtag to fill the fifth nominee spot with their favorite artist. In this way, we got music fans talking about the EMA in the crucial week before the full list of 2014 nominees were announced, and this in turn made them invested in engaging with the EMA site/app and social accounts on 16 September to see if the artist they voted for secured an official nomination. We succeeded in engaging fans in a way that gave them even more power over the outcome of the Worldwide Act race, and involved them in the international social conversation.
And those fans were heard loud and clear: Over a week, we saw 18.9 million social votes and exposure for scores of local-favorite artists around the world. Even more impressive, 14 of those 'wild card' nominees voted in by fans went on to win their local award, and of those, 4 went on to compete for the title of Worldwide Act. 'Wild card' hashtag voting helped drive a record-breaking level of social conversation around the 2014 MTV EMA with 389 million total EMA mentions across platforms over the course of the campaign. Through this campaign, we found our fans wanted to have a voice in who represented their country, and that the love of music everywhere is alive and well.
