The other side of digitalization. How Diia saved the winners of the National Selection 2024 Jerry Heil & Alyona Alyona

The winning Eurovision song from Ukraine, Teresa & Maria, performed by Jerry Heil and Alyona Alyona, is not heard by lazy only. The song is truly a hit, a format song, and it is deservedly successful in the digital world. It's digital because the song's streams on YouTube Music alone have exceeded 7 million plays in a short time.

But what role did the incident with the Diia app play in the song's fate?

For the second year in a row, Ukrainians have been voting for the National Selection jury members and the participants who will represent Ukraine at the Eurovision Song Contest using the Diia app. The idea is good, and modern and once again emphasizes the advanced digitalization of our country.

Now, for comparison: more than 100 thousand Ukrainians voted for the winner of the National Selection 2023, and yesterday more than a million votes were cast. The difference is striking but also predictable.

Last year, the voting period lasted several hours. It was necessary to vote in a short time while the live broadcast was on. 2024 changed absolutely everything - the overload of Diia led to a total failure. The app crashed, and the hosts of the National Selection announced that due to a technical glitch, the voting had been extended for a day until 19:05 on February 4. The logic: more time means more votes. The voting precedent aroused curiosity among viewers, and so those who did not even plan to vote logged into the app when it was fixed.

Now, the most important aspect of this year's selection is the artists' fan bases. It was in 2024 that we saw a completely different approach of the participants to "testing" their musical statements in the media space.

Aggressive promotion has replaced the classic perception of the contestants by the audience. An insane number of tiktoks, participation in all YouTube shows, television projects, active rotation on radio and TV, scandals, and super-powerful work with fan bases. Artists' social networks have turned into a non-stop machine for working with their audience. Sometimes I had the impression that I was watching the race for the presidential election in Ukraine. I'm being quite serious without exaggeration.

Aggressive marketing is the main trump card of the ENKO label, which brought two flagship projects to the National Selection 2024 - YAKTAK and Jerry Heil & Alyona Alyona. The approach of these artists has set a completely new trend in the Ukrainian music market - to win at any cost.

The girls also gained a huge lead in the voting over their competitors thanks to the duo. The merger of the singers' fan bases automatically increases the chances of winning many times over, as I have repeatedly said in my YouTube videos. The topic of women's unification is something fresh for our viewers and something very noble for Europeans.

Jerry Heil & Alyona Alyona built an absolutely correct PR strategy and that's why they won. Of course, the song played its role, but without a professional strategy, there would have been no result.