Revolutionizing the Emmy Awards
The National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences (NATAS) came to us during the pandemic when they needed a secure and virtual way to collect celebrity nominee video submissions and ensure their annual Emmy Awards show could air regardless of social distancing restrictions. With only a three-week timeline, Crowd Favorite worked with their team to build a custom video submission platform, allowing over 125 nominees to do just that. The successful completion of that project gave NATAS the confidence to come to us with the concept they had for a fully integrated online judging application for The Emmys.
Empowering NATAS to Run its Largest Show Ever
We worked with them to create a unique and intuitive judging platform designed to streamline the complex workflow involved in running a National Awards Show. The new judging application seamlessly manages multiple types of interactions and enabled NATAS to oversee more than 4,000 video entries across 57 categories – the most ever for a single NATAS-administered competition.
By scaling this bespoke judging solution to all their National Awards Shows, NATAS has significantly improved the experience for Emmy Award nominees and their teams, while also providing an easily accessible digital archive of data and videos.
This platform enables the Entertainment Industry to submit their best work, guides judges through the voting process, and simplifies the process of distributing the coveted winged lady to the awardees.
The inaugural Children’s & Family Emmys had 3,000+ Judged Entries, the most ever for any NATAS-administered Emmys.
Managing the Many Moving Parts of Award Shows
NATAS runs multiple competitions a year, which means multiple instances of the old system were required, making it difficult for people to use, causing them to log in or register multiple times a year, year after year. The older system was also a closed system which meant new features took a long time to be developed. These difficulties, combined with the day-to-day manual practices NATAS developed over time – spreadsheets, phone calls, one-off payment methods, and manual data entry really drove home the point that NATAS needed a new bespoke solution. The end result is a comprehensive, customizable judging application that makes it easier for them to manage multiple award competitions, and for visitors to register and participate.
50+ Entertainment Categories
1,000 Registered Applicants & Judges
3,000+ Entries Processed & Judged
4,000+ Television Entries Submitted
4,000+ Entry Videos Managed
Impressive stats for just one of the six annual Awards Programs! Looking for a similar solution?
From Paper to Digital
Creating a Scalable Open Source Solution to Simplify a Complex Process
The first goal was to take the paper-based judging platform that was built in the days of video tape, digitize it and improve the overall User Experience for nominees, judges, and the team.
While awards shows may look star-studded and glamorous, the reality is that there is an extremely complex system working behind the scenes to make it all happen. Each show consists of multiple phases, including registrations, nominations, submissions, judging, and reporting, that all need to be connected and in sync.
Crowd Favorite built a complex, bespoke judging application designed to run multiple instances of itself in order to streamline and optimize the overall process required to organize large events. This ensures a smooth transition between processes as different departments need to access the platform.
By using Open Source and best-in-class components, this solution allows a flexible, yet detailed workflow that can be built out and customized in a low-code approach. This enables the NATAS team to easily create structured, templatized, yet flexible competitions to support rule changes at category levels.
Harnessing Data to Optimize Personalization
The amount of data collected for one show is huge, but the amount of data collected for all the shows, year after year is massive. When working with Crowd Favorite, NATAS was looking for a solution that would allow them to work with the data from past awards shows, while creating a more personalized and improved experience for their nominees, as well as their own team.
In order to capture the information, this new judging application supports collecting competition data beyond a competition’s time period, including individual user/visitor logins and accounts. This allows the NATAS team to better understand how the platform is being used, so they can make improvements for future shows.
Additionally, this custom judging application supports personalization and deep analytics that track the viewing of video-based media. By creating these personalization rules, NATAS is able to deliver quality content that engages all users.
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We were honored that The National Academy of Television Arts & Sciences trusted Crowd Favorite to deliver this unique and bespoke judging application and look forward to more collaboration in the future.
The National Academy of Television Arts & Sciences (NATAS) is an American professional service organization founded in 1955 for “the advancement of the arts and sciences of television and the promotion of creative leadership for artistic, educational and technical achievements within the television industry”. NATAS is known for the Emmy Awards, including those for daytime, sports, and news and documentary programming.
