2011 Academy Awards Wrap-up – Buzz, Gullwings and Missed Facebook Opportunities

It takes more than an f-bomb to excite the kids these days.

This year’s show, all 3 hours of it, was less entertaining than a Rihanna/Ciara Twitter war. The heavy favorites prevailed and the program was classic Oscars, like seriously classic, like Billy Crystal introducing Bob Hope classic.

Robert Downey Jr. and Jude Law got a little edgy — for the Oscars — by discussing RDJ’s sordid past in cheap hotels and Sandy Bullock roasted Jeff Bridges asking him, “Dude, give someone else a chance…when is enough enough?” for earning a second Best Actor nomination in two years. When President Barack Obama shared his favorite cinematic song — As Time Goes By (what?) and Oprah announced the winner of Best Documentary by talking about how movies help us escape reality, it was just plain odd. On the flip side, Jennifer Hudson looked amazing, poised and elegant and the kids of PS22 stole the show — too bad all their friends were asleep when they finally performed.

Buzz Predictions

At first blush, the pre-event buzz (our friends at Mashable released our infographic) seemed to be out of step with the Academy. Yet looking deeper you may have noticed that except for Best Picture, our 2nd place picks won 3 of the remaining 4 categories. Perhaps buzz does play a role in a more layered analysis.

As pointed out in another Mashable post, our initial analysis missed on Best Picture, placing The King’s Speech 7th. We believe this was a result of our methodology, particularly including spanish-language mentions impacting our share of voice data.

An iPad App and Gullwings – Car Companies Won!

After learning brands such as JCPenney, Hyundai and Dove were spending significant $$ this year ($1.75M a slot), we decided to dive into the buzz on advertisers as well. Knowing that offline advertising, when done right, drives online affinity, we also decided to analyze Facebook fan growth  to determine if anyone moved the needle.

JCPenney won the buzz wars with sheer brute force and lots and lots of money. We can also give them kudo’s for spreading it out and going after women’s fashion, men’s fashion and home decor…nicely done.

Many advertisers re-ran their Super Bowl spots, some strong like the quirky Best Buy Ozzy/Justin Bieber ad, and some truly awful such as the Adrien Brody Stella Artois ad.   The stand outs for creative this year were the car companies. Hyundai WON hands-down with it’s iPad app owner’s manual spot, so cool. The BWM ad about the X3 being designed and built in the US was great. And the Mercedes ad for the SLS AMG with the gullwing doors was smart and stylish.

Hyundai iPad App spot

BMW X3 spot

Mercedes SLS AMG spot (I can’t find it, post a link in the comments!)

LivingSocial, Xfinity and M&Ms get honorable mention for good creative — yet not enough to set them apart.

JCP with their new “younger” logo (a page from the KFC and Mickey-Ds playbook) tried yet missed the mark. Trying to be fresh & hip felt forced and inauthentic. Cindy Crawford’s home collection being the single exception. AT&T spent a ton of money to run old spots and American Express ran the same OK “shop small” ad at least twice.

Advertisers Missed the Facebook Opportunity

We looked at the average FB fan growth rate for the period leading up to the show versus their average weekly growth more generally. All brands fell below averages, a HUGE missed opportunity.

Only Dove and Miracle Whip (who ran pre-show sponsorships) showed any spike on Facebook and both of these brands have been building momentum across media with big campaigns and didn’t exceed their running growth with these spends. Brands with engaging and “viral” ideas such as www.jcp.com/musthaves should be diving much deeper into Facebook to capture the heart and minds of their fan base as well as driving loyalty among younger women. There’s simply no excuse for not including digital, especially social and mobile, in your big fat Oscar ad spend in 2011.

So, The King’s Speech, Colin Firth, Natalie Portman and Hyundai were the clear winners of the night. The Social Network and JCP, not so much. Now get back to your lives, people!

All data was gathered using Webtrends Social Measurement and analysis was conducted by Webtrends analysts.