We ran this concept on MTV with our 900 numbers. First artist we did, was this hot looking white dude that could sing like a Vanilla Ice kind of way and was a fantastic dancer.
We produced a 2 minute TV commercial we ran featuring his music video and then pushed the 900 voting numbers at the end of the spot to vote Yes, He's A Star or No He's Not.
The fucking guy was so excited when I called him after the first week cause I said to him "Mark, you're not going to believe how many calls you got. I could hear him literally jumping up and down thinking I'm gonna be a pop star now. Then I had to say yeh you got a lot of calls Mark but they voted 99 to 1 that you're not a Star. Fucking guy was devasted and never took our calls after that saying we had ruined his singer career forever.
I think a lot of people voted just to fuck him up deliberately cause he had a cockiness about him.
Anyway we did great regardless, which we knew going into the deal. How could we lose, if they loved him we'd get a ton of calls, and if they hated him we'd still get a ton of calls. So either way it was a well hedged bet.
