Idols Season 11

Idols SA is a television show on the South African television networks Mzanzi Magic and M-Net based on the popular British show Pop Idol. The show is a contest to determine the best young singer in South Africa. After several auditions the performers are narrowed down to 100 in the theatre rounds. After that the semifinalists perform live and are chosen by the audience to qualify for the round of the last 10-12 finalists. The audience votes on the candidates they would like to qualify for the next round until one winner remains. WeChat offered a solution through its official accounts allowing audiences to vote for their favourite artists. The voting solution accounted for a large majority of the votes and pushed votes to 78.8 million votes, surpassing the previous season’s previous record of 24.3 million.

My contribution:

-Overall management of the relationship between WeChat Africa and Multichoice

-Developed innovative product placement and second screen experiences for Multichoice Africa

-Interface between software development teams and Multichoice stakeholders

What I learnt:

-Product utility as a driver of long term product adoption

-The challenges of driving adoption of super apps

- Managing products that scale very quickly