This year, like previous years, we wanted to bring viewers on The X Factor journey with us, so an app that uses User Generated Content was the ideal solution. But if we were to compete agains the mirriad of apps fighting for a place on people’s phones, we needed to tap into the pop cultrure world we were trying to play a meaningful role in. That meant taking advantage of some key trends:

• 3D filters:

With the explosion in popularity seen by Snapchat, and the widespread mimicking of its functionality, the ability to add 3D filters to images and movies was the biggest trend in social media, making our app immediately relevant to the show’s audience.

• Lip Syncing:

The growth in lip syncing functionality, led by Dubsmash, allowed us to create a meaningful connection between our fun engaging app, and the musical content of the show.

Inspired by these trends, we conceived and built

The app used face recognition technology to add fun filters; the filters were illustrative and 3D, each built bespoke and constructed from artwork.

Filters were animated, but the models also had physics built into them for realistic movement.

Our filters also had multiplayer functionality of upto 4 users, so that the whole family could enjoy the app together.

Users could then choose from a variety of tracks and lip-sync along in real-time.

Viewers could then upload their videos for the chance to star during the X Factor.

With over 30 filters and 20 tracks, it meant idents were constantly refreshed.

The app was live for 16 weeks, and we aired 10 new idents a week, allowing us to showcase as many of our filters and tracks as possible.

Musicians such as Little Mix also launched their singles within our app, allowing us a greater platform for engagement across social media.

TalkTalk’s sponsorship of the 2016 X Factor was their most successful ever. Against a difficult backdrop for the brand, it directly produced a 29% uplift in positive opinion amongst viewers, helping to change the conversation about TalkTalk for good.

Through the overwhelming participation and engagement of the viewers, the app was downloaded over 215,000 times and used more than 2 million times, allowing X Factor viewers to create over 1.6 million videos.

Our targets were to drive increases up in preference by 10%, consideration by 27%, and momentum by 26%.

We achieved preference up by 13% in comparison to the 7% pre campaign, consideration was up to 30% in contrast to the 23% in 2015, and finally the momentum was up 28% versus the 23% pre campaign.

In summary, it was an unprecedented shared success across client, agencies and media owners.