Wow — Talk about audience interaction!! As most of you might know, the Academy Awards, better known as the Oscars, took place on Sunday night. The Oscars is the biggest award show of the year. It’s the night where not only film enthusiasts get together to celebrate the most glamorous night of red carpet, but also when pop culture lovers like myself get to live vicariously through our favorite celebrities.
This year’s host, Seth MacFarlen from Family Guy, brought in 40.3 million viewers, as opposed to last year’s show where 39.3 million viewers tuned in; an 11% increase from last year. Even though it was the fourth highest rated Oscars show in a decade, these numbers are not surprising; however, the amount of Tweets is something to talk about. During the event, 8.9 million Tweets were #Oscars related and that doesn’t include other social media platforms. Also, like mentioned on the headline, there were over 85,000 Tweets/minute going out during the broadcast. Google reports that there was a spike at 11:54 ET with 4,500 searches/ minute, when Michelle Obama introduced the Best Picture award – where the handsome Ben Affleck and George Clooney won for Argo. Below are Google’s charts for the most searched red carpet dresses, as well as most searched nominees:
Anne Hathaway and Jennifer Lawrence were the ladies of the night, despite Jennifer’s unfortunate fall on her way to get her Best Leading Actress award.
Now, as part of the 8.9 million Tweets about Oscars, a chunk of them were advertising related. As digital advertising evolves, more and more companies are trying to keep up with all the social media platforms to be able to interact with their audiences. The unit cost per each 30-second spot during the Oscars was $1.7 million. The most committed advertiser during the event was Samsung with six ads, where one of them was a 90-second spot, and was the most talked about ad of the night. This 90- second spot featured Director Tim Burton, known for his crazy ideas.
Samsung not only had a strong presence on ABC, but also on the E! Network- aka the greatest entertainment and pop culture network of all times. E! had full coverage of the Oscars pre-red carpet, red carpet and after party events all day. The correspondents would utilize the Samsung Galaxy S3, and tablets, to write what they thought about their favorite dresses and Oscar moments.
Also on the E! Network, Skinny Girl Cocktails (the Real Housewife, Bethany Frankel’s original invention of the Skinny Girl Margarita) was a big promoter. During the Red Carpet special show, the company had a booth where they taught the audience how to make low calorie cocktails. However, they also had a call to action, which that was to Tweet the hashtag #LadiesInRed for every celebrity with a red dress, and would donate up to 50K to Dress For Success.
Lastly, Pantene was another committed company airing advertisements during the event with a 15- spot that ended with a call to action that asked the audience to hashtag #WantThatHair. With this hashtag, the audience had the chance to ask Pantene how to recreate their favorite hairdos during the Oscars.
Below Pantene explains via Twitter how to create Reese Witherspoon’s amazing side hairdo.
Unfortunately for me, award season is over (sad face), but pop culture keeps on going and social media keeps evolving so there will be plenty more to look forward to…
Social Media: The Beginning of a New Era 