Television shows engaging with the audience via missed calls!

“Voting for my favorite contestants on Indian television reality shows just got easier. With a missed call, I can cast my vote and that too for free! Now, registering multiple votes for all the shows that I follow is so much simpler” - says a reality show viewer.

A recent research conducted by Mobilox Innovations Pvt. ltd delves into the voting habits of reality show viewers taking into the consideration the advent of missed call voting. Being a relatively new form of voting, it is important to know how voters are adapting to the new process.

When reality show viewers were asked how often they vote, 37% said that they vote regularly for their favorite contestants. 30% of the respondents vote every time just for the love of voting. 21% of the surveyed reality show viewers voted for the first time this year.

Akash Chawla, ZEEL - Marketing Head, National Channels, says “For Zee, the consumer is always at the center of our business decisions. When we pioneered the missed call mechanism with Mobilox it was with the intention of being the front-runners who not only wish to seek more viewer participation but also take steps in 

making that viewer participation the most convenient for our consumers. We are thankful that our viewers gave us a great response.The number of votes grew more than 10 fold. We are now at the brink of announcing our next such initiative soon.”

Further into the survey, the voters were asked whether they had ever participated in reality show voting but not through missed call. A whopping 66% admitted that they had never used any other medium to register a vote in comparison to 33% who had experimented with SMS voting before.

Nikhil Madhok, VP – Marketing, Star Plus said, “We were bringing back one of our most popular shows, Nach Baliye, and wanted to ensure that we have a voting tool which will be convenient and easy to engage for the viewers and also robust enough to handle the crores of votes which would come in.  The toll free number solution which Mobilox came up with worked brilliantly for the show, which saw an unprecedented viewer response. Star Plus, which has always been a pioneer when it comes to introducing new technology will continue to partner and engage with such disruptive and viewer friendly solutions.”

To drive the research further, respondents were asked whether they preferred missed call voting over SMS voting over missed call voting. 86% supported missed call 

voting. Of the 86% of the people who supported missed call voting 48% of the people supported it since they found it easy, 37% supported it since it was free and 8% found it very convenient. However 10% people preferred SMS voting since they have a perception that they can also pass comments to their favorite participant.

“Mobile has made it possible to engage and interact with an audience of millions. The simplicity and convenience of mobile tools like missed call, has been instrumental in reaching an audience of every kind and for a variety of reasons. Missed call voting per say, cannot be generalized to reality shows but in fact finds tremendous utility in gathering quality public opinions. Missed call voting comes with a clear objective; to maximize brand – viewer engagement. As per our survey, it was revealed that viewers found SMS voting tedious and expensive. 86% of respondents realized a higher confidence and belief in the show because they were not charged for voting. All this means that missed call has changed the way the audience votes!” mentions Mobilox MD,CEO, Abhijit Saxena.

Sangeetha Aiyer- Vice President & Head Marketing – A+E Networks ITV18  adds, “In an age where marketers of all hues are vying for the viewers’ attention, the missed call provides a simple, effortless solution which helps them interact with campaigns. Case in point was our initiative ‘The Greatest Indian’ where we received a whopping 1.8 crore votes of the 2 cr votes was received through the missed call solution, helping us engage with our viewers in a manner never done before in either the news or factual space.”
Mobilox were pioneers of using missed call as a voting method and have successfully implemented it in Zee TV’s Dance India Dance and DID ‘Lil Masters, Star Plus’  Jo Jeeta Wohi Superstar, Nach Baliye and History Channel’s Greatest Indian and Bollywood 100.

“In the past one year there were 5 major implementation of missed call voting in the entertainment industry and all of which were done by Mobilox - during which we have managed a cumulative volume of 11 crore plus missed call votes. These staggering numbers only mean that the viewers have open heartedly adopted this new 

voting process and also strengthens the fact that – Missed call voting is here to stay. This year we believe that apart from entertainment channels a lot of news channels will also use similar innovations especially for taking opinion polls during elections. This can be a big game changer in the manner in which people express their opinions and that too for free” mentions Mobilox Director Innovations and Marketing, Vishwajeet Sukhija.

With television channels like Zee TV, Star Plus and History adopting the new process it is a matter of time when others hop onto the missed call bandwagon. In any case, viewers are to be benefited the most from the recent developments and can now freely vote and participate in the show of their choice.