In the last few years, award shows have been dominated by social media and the second-screen experience. If you weren’t clutching your phone or tablet during the 2015 Academy Awards, you likely missed out on the flood of real-time marketing and online conversations spawned by the fanfare, fashions, and (controversial) results.
While we typically think of Twitter as the epicenter for real-time online conversations, Facebook came out on top at this year’s Academy Awards. Facebook reported that 21 Million people discussed the Academy Awards on the platform this year, creating a grand total of 58 Million related posts. That figure dwarfs the volume of Oscar-related content on Twitter, which Nielsen reported to be 5.9 Million Oscar-related tweets in the U.S.
The concentration of film-flavored social media activity presented a great opportunity for the film studios behind this year’s nominees to drive engagement and brand awareness. So we used the TrackMaven platform to analyze the Facebook content from the film studios responsible for this year’s Best Picture nominees.
The Share of Interactions graph below compares the volume of Facebook interactions from the film studios with a horse (or two) in the Best Picture race across Oscars week:
Warner Brothers (in turquoise at the top) and Paramount (green) built strong Facebook momentum leading up to Oscars night, largely due to promotions for new films releasing this week (Focus and Hot Tub Time Machine 2, respectively).
By the eve of the awards, however, it was Focus Features (orange) and Fox Searchlight (dark aqua) that pulled ahead in the Facebook engagement race with by tapping into the Academy Awards excitement.
On the night of the awards, the primary content strategy used by the top-performing studios on Facebook was to pair image posts with congratulatory messages honoring the relevant award winners throughout the night.
Focus Features, for example, saw Facebook interactions 10.12x their average when they congratulated Theory of Everything star Eddie Redmayne for his win for Best Actor in a Leading Role.
In fact, Focus Features was able to distribute the above post while Redmayne was still on stage accepting his award! By playing into to the real-time suspense and excitement of the awards with their Facebook content, Focus Features reaped 23.5K interactions with this single post.
In contrast, Fox Searchlight’s Birdman and Grand Budapest Hotel were two of the largest hits of the night, claiming multiple awards each. But the studio’s Facebook content lost out to that of Focus Features in terms of interactions.
The most successful post of the evening from Fox Searchlight honored Alejandro G. Iñárritu’s Best Director win for Birdman, and hit 6.11x their average Facebook engagement with 2.2K total interactions.
Despite winning the biggest award of the night (and using a trendy #blessed hashtag), the post for Birdman’s Best Picture win saw only 1.7K interactions (about 5x greater than the company’s average engagement on Facebook). Both of Fox Searchlight’s top-performing posts were also posted five minutes after their awards were given out, much slower than Focus Feature’s real-time posting strategy.
We found the speed of posting to be key in the engagement difference in the performance of these Oscars-night from Focus Features versus Fox Searchlight. Despite Fox Searchlight’s Grand Budapest Hotel and Birdman winning four awards a piece versus Theory of Everything‘s single award, Focus Feature’s commitment to real-time posting helped the studio win the night on Facebook.
When it comes to a live event like the Oscars, remember that every minute matters to your brand’s online followers, who are on the prowl for the latest, up-to-the-minute updates. Once you miss your opportunity to break the news, engagement suffers as the show moves on to the next trending topic. The Academy Awards are the perfect zeitgeist to harness the power of real-time marketing!