Breaking Ground with a Revolutionary Casting Platform
Mid-2007 MTV came to us with a couple of challenges. They wanted us to streamline their casting process for the super hit, The Real World, as well as create an online community for fans of the show, something that was cool enough to be sticky, and fresh enough to keep kids coming back for more. How can Highly Evolved take the first and most well known reality show ever, and do something just as groundbreaking on the web?
We built the ultimate profile platform, RealWorldCasting.com, that gave MTV the chance to learn more about potential candidates and to digitally manage the intricate process of casting from top-to-bottom. MTV originally projected 275K unique visitors a day as a success metric. Our site hit 1.3M unique visitors a day within the first week. Within the first month, the site had 45M visitors, and the number of total contest submissions increased from 40K to three times that amount.
Viacom was so ecstatic with the site, they asked us to take our platform and roll it out to their other reality shows, including, I Love New York2, Flavor of Love, Acceptable TV, My Super Sweet 16 and ParisBFF. So ecstatic were they, MTV sent us thank you gifts.
We’ve now accomplished a feat that most agencies can’t – MTV now thinks of us as their interactive hit squad. Functioning as their think tank, we offer solutions in the areas of planning and architecture, website design, branding / marketing, revenue generation, business development and technology integration. We solve problems others can’t while being creative, playing with different formats, delving into emerging technologies – all while encouraging MTV to push in new and radical directions. It’s a pretty sweet gig with one of the most revered brands on the planet.
