Taco Bell and MTV let fans vote for Best New Artist in viral chatbot campaign

For emerging artists, the Best New Artist award at MTV’s Video Music Awards is an enormous opportunity to break through to new audiences. Not only is it a career game-changer for artists, it’s also a fantastic way for fans to participate in the awards show. In 2017, MTV (‎@MTV) and Taco Bell (‎@tacobell) teamed up to create a unique experience on Twitter that would let fans vote for their favorite nominated artist in Direct Messages.

MTV used a Direct Message chatbot that would allow people to vote for their favorite new artist, all on Twitter. The chatbot also encouraged fans to share their vote with their followers via a Tweet and encourage them to cast a vote. Fans could vote for a week leading up to the pre-show. After that, the top two contenders competed in a head-to-head hashtag vote, with the ultimate winner crowned during the main show.

MTV and the Twitter Content Partnerships team worked with Taco Bell to sponsor the experience. Taco Bell used the Direct Message Card to create Promoted Tweets that showed up in the timeline of people interested in MTV, the VMAs, Taco Bell, the nominated artists, and music to let them start voting in a single click.

After a close voting battle, Julia Michaels (‎@imjmichaels) and Khalid (‎@thegreatkhalid) emerged as the top two contenders, with Khalid winning the title of Best New Artist. The campaign was award-worthy as well.  More than 54,000 people cast their vote with the chatbot — making up 77% of everyone who engaged. Most impressively, people sharing the experience with their followers organically increased voting by 25%, and earned them twice as many organic impressions as MTV’s own Tweets.