Nicole Wilson Wins National Search for America′s Most Unique Characters
Nicole Wilson of North Canton, Ohio, a talented woman with the astounding ability to speak and sing backwards fluently, has been chosen as the Grand Prize Winner of the Show Us Your Character Contest, it was announced today by Chris McCumber, senior vice president of marketing and brand strategy at USA Network. The contest, which ran from March 20th through April 28th, gave fame seekers the opportunity to demonstrate their unique talents by uploading their personal videos and character profiles at showusyourcharacter.com, the first digital social network created by a cable television network.
"The diversity of talent among the contestants was truly indicative of the rich social community that has developed on the site," said McCumber. "While choosing a winner among the 30 gifted finalists was difficult, Nicole Wilson emerged as the most unique character that embodies the spirit of USA′s Characters Welcome campaign."
"′m′I dnoyeb dellirht tuoba gninniw,′ which means I′m beyond thrilled about winning," said the lively 21 year-old Nicole Wilson of Canton, Ohio, a recent college graduate of Baldwin-Wallace College with a B.S. degree in Chemistry, Exercise Physiology and Fitness Management. "I love sharing my talent with others and making them laugh so the opportunity to do that on the TV screen, silver screen and computer screen is just amazing," she added.
As the Grand Prize winner, Nicole Wilson will be seen in a national on-air campaign on USA Network beginning June 18th during the broadcast of The 4400; featured on over 10,000 silver screens in AMC, Cinemark and Regal Entertainment Group′s FirstLook movie pre-show and will get an exclusive Web series of her own, which will live on showusyourcharacter.com. In addition, she will receive a MAC G5 Quadcore Desktop with 30" HD screen and a Sony HVR professional HD camcorder with which to create webisode greatness.
While in 6th grade, Nicole and her mother were driving home from school one day when they abruptly approached a stop sign. Convinced her mother wasn′t going to stop, she yelled "Pots!" Confused, Nicole realized that she read the sign backwards. That afternoon, they went to visit her grandparents in Akron and she read every street sign backwards. Since that day, Nicole has honed her ability to fluently speak backwards.
Show Us Your Character is the most recent phase of USA′s successful Characters Welcome branding effort that launched in July 2005. With the launch of Show Us Your Character, the focus shifted from the characters on USA to those that populate cities and towns across the U.S.A. Web surfers who visit showusyourcharacter.com can upload their videos and pictures as well as create detailed character profiles they can share with the world. Among the features found on the site is the opportunity to meet and interact with like-minded people nationwide, send viral videos to their friends, engage in real-time chat and e-mail one another.
The entire Show Us Your Character campaign was supported through an on-air image campaign highlighting real, unique characters from across the country. There was also an aggressive grassroots effort in five major markets - New York, Chicago, Los Angeles, Philadelphia and Boston. These cities hosted mobile kiosks with web cams allowing potential characters to upload their videos or pictures to showusyourcharacter.com and learn more about the contest.
Pulling out all the stops, USA rolled out a guerilla casting call to encourage potential characters to register and upload their profiles. "Casting Call" posters were distributed in the top 20 markets in various locations and the network also blitzed the web with a significant online presence via classified sites, career/job sites, social networking sites, dating communities, entertainment enthusiast sites, major portals, ad networks and search engines.
