There are few annual events that can attract a mass audience like the Oscars. Social media hype around the ceremony was substantial with around 12.5 million uses of the hashtag #Oscars, proving that brands need to take advantage of this massive moment on television. It is a moment when film, fashion, and the arts collaborate for a night of entertainment. It also generates a great amount of buzz online and especially during the red carpet pre-show.
For digital marketers, the road to the Oscars starts long before the nominations or the red carpet is laid out. Fashion brands from the world’s top couture houses plan and strategize on how to best represent their most prized garments to make the most of the global attention. At Talkwalker, we are constantly plugged into the real-time conversation using our social data intelligence platform – and using social listening, we found some compelling social media lessons brands can learn direct from the Oscar’s red carpet. Let’s take a look at how one brand, in particular, carried the online conversation that evening.
Backing a Winner – The Gucci Buzz
According to online audiences, the clear winner for the most talked about fashion brand during the awards show was Gucci. Gucci’s brand buzz began before the show and continued well beyond the ceremony itself. Gucci continued to trailblaze with a 44.9% share of the social discussion during the ceremony (left). Top fashion brand Givenchy came in second with a 34.7% share, and Christian Dior came in third with a 7.9% share. The social conversation during and after the event made it clear that Best Actress winner Brie Larson was the leading lady of the evening in her stunning Royal Blue Gucci gown (middle).
Being the brand of choice for best actress winner Brie Larson had a big impact on Gucci’s social dominance
We can see from the theme cloud above (right) showing the most used hashtags on the night, that not only was Gucci the most prominently featured high fashion house at the Oscars, the hashtag #BrieLarson also made a splash and drove more attention than a lot of brand hashtags.
Backing a winner is of course easier said than done but ensuring that at least one of the key event figures (best actress nominees in this case) is linked to your brand can help to narrow the odds.
The Celebrity Takeover on Social Media
You may have noticed in the previous theme cloud that alongside #BrieLarson and #Gucci was the name of an actor – Jared Leto. #JaredLeto is among the most used hashtags on the night because of another Gucci social strategy – having the Academy Award winning actor take over their Snapchat account for the evening. Leto is the face of Gucci’s new fragrance, Gucci Guilty, and has made regular appearances on their Snapchat feed. Like Twitter, Snapchat is fast moving and well suited to live events and the social data shows that his appearance here helped Gucci cut through the vast amounts of social buzz on the night.
Gucci brand ambassador Jared Leto helped the Italian fashion giant outperform competitors on social
Don’t Forget the Post Event Buzz
For events like the Oscars, capitalizing on pre-event buzz is a given due to the focus on the red carpet, but the post event buzz is also key, as the graphic below shows.
Oscars buzz peaked during the ceremony but remained high long after the main event
Whilst the clear peak is during the event, at around 9pm PST, when mentions were coming in at a rate of over 50,000 per minute, the buzz on social and online was still going strong around 12 hours after the main peak. The length of time that post-event buzz continues will vary for different events but real-time social listening can help you to keep track. In this case Gucci in particular maintained high levels of social presence well after the event had concluded.
Key Takeaways From Fashion’s Big Night
Major events like the Oscars and the Super Bowl attract and retain the attention of audiences very effectively. The Oscar’s brings friends, family and social media communities together to watch and engage with one another online, and via various forms of media. Audiences get inspired to react and share their thoughts across a plethora of media platforms with tens and thousands of event related posts every minute. So what can brands and other digital marketers alike learn from the lionshare of buzz #Gucci amassed during the show?
- Do as much research as possible to make sure your brand is linked to one of the potential key figures, as backing a winner makes a substantial difference to brand exposure.
- Get your influencers and brand ambassadors actively involved on your social channels as these are the people who can take your social presence to another level.
- Don’t forget the post event buzz. At events like the Oscar’s especially, this time period is ideal for brands as people tend to focus on the event itself once it has started. Just because the Oscars have wrapped, it doesn’t mean the conversation is over.
Real-time social listening can help brands in every sector understand the buzz around live events and use it to their advantage, just as Gucci did at this year’s Oscars.
What was your favorite social media moment from the Oscars? Share your thoughts with us @Talkwalker!
Banner Image: From Wikimedia Commons and Twitter/LeahBergman
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