Dick Clark Productions Goes Mobile at American Music Awards

This Sunday Nov. 22, the 2009 American Music Awards (AMAs) will take place at the NOKIA Theatre L.A. Live. You can watch it that evening from 8 to 11 pm on ABC. And if you’re truly a fan, you can now get on the red carpet thanks to an arrangement between dick clark productions and SayNow.

SayNow, a mobile social networking platform that connects fans and stars, activated an AMA SayNow number available now (310-736-6766). So far, over 8,500 fans have called the pre-show hosts and left questions they would like them to ask their favorite artists. By signing in, fans also get text messages when new updates are available on the SayNow number. Updates include information on red carpet guests, performances, presenters, nominations and voting information as well as exclusive information only available via SayNow.

The “Official AMA Pre-Show,” presented by Coca-Cola, will feature hosts Julie Moran, Jenni Pulos, Jai Rodriguez and Taryn Southern as well as the “Coke Correspondent” winner of the ongoing national competition to become a red carpet correspondent at the 2009 AMAs.

“The SayNow tool is really something that we think is amazing for what we’re trying to do for the pre-show,” says Ariel Elazar, VP digital distribution & brand licensing for dcp. “We want this to be the most interactive red carpet to date. We want to acknowledge what people are saying and we want to give fans and artists a chance to connect on the red carpet. We’ve reached out to many social media companies and, on the mobile end, we went with SayNow.”

The call-to-action has been very specific, says Elazar, encouraging fans to ask specific questions for the stars that will walk the red carpet. “People started calling a way,” he says. “The pre-show hosts also prompted people to send questions. We wanted to create a bonding between them and the consumers.”

dcp associates Premiere Entertainment will provide production services on the multi-camera red carpet event and USTREAM will power the live stream to a series of dcp-developed video “Fan Widgets” . The pre-show will be available on Facebook;ABC.com, Ustream.TV, and partner sites including My Coke Rewards; MyCoke on Facebook, and Ryan Seacrest’s Facebook page among others. Fans and stars will also be able to interact live with the pre-show hosts via Facebook and Twitter.

Elazar reveals that this is not, strictly speaking, dick clark productions’ first mobile initiative. “The first was an iPhone app for the Academy of Country Music Awards ceremony,” he says. “It was an unofficial initaitive, put together in two weeks. right after I came on board.”

He is enthused about the SayNow application for its reach to fans. “We wanted to bring consumers a free service so they’d be aware of the campaign,” he says. “This combines voice and text. But the reason why we chose voice is because it’s powerful.”

This is just the beginning of dick clark productions’ foray into mobile. Elazar says that So You Think You Can Dance is another dcp show, co-produced with 19 Entertainment. “We’re looking into mobile games and iPhone apps,” he says. “We’re all about social communication, anything that allows our fans to virally spread the word or connect with each other .”

As to utilizing dick clark productions over 50 year archive of video for mobile, Elazar says that is also on the agenda.”We own 3,500 hours of video starting in 1957,” he says. “We have a variety of things we can do.” He reports talks with MobiTV to get some of the content up on that company’s mobile TV network.

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