34.6MM people tuned in to the 87th Annual Academy Awards to get a glimpse of what Hollywood royalty slipped on, as well as what host Neil Patrick Harris slipped off (whether they wanted to or not). The films honored ran the gamut from a washed up actor's plight to realize a Broadway dream in Birdman to a young drummer's journey to discover his own potential in Whiplash. With few companies able to leverage big moments in live events (think Arby's asking Pharrell to give them their hat back at last year's Grammys), we wanted to see how long the movie magic would last online, and more specifically, how long brands have to take advantage of the chatter around it.
The Tale of 281.9K Twitter Engagements
Before we talk timing, let's take a quick look at the biggest moments themselves. The digital culmination of one of the industry's most coveted awards was when movie icon Julie Andrews took the stage after Lady Gaga's tribute, generating over 32K engagements. Best picture winner Birdman was close behind, generating over 30K reactions, while winners Patricia Arquette, Alexandre Desplat and Graham Moore round out the top five.
HONORABLE MENTIONS GO TO:
6. 28.5K Engagements: Just after Alejandro G. Iñárritu wins best director
7. 26.9K Engagements: Eddie Redmayne wins best actor
8. 26.3K Engagements: Neil Patrick Harris' monologue ends, makes Oprah joke
9. 25.4K Engagements: Just after "Everything Is Awesome" is performed from The Lego Movie
10. 26.9K Engagements: Common and John Legend win best original song
Timing Is Everything
With today's average attention span lasting a mere 8 seconds, knowing when to get into a conversation is paramount to brands and media alike. In analyzing the top ten moments, we found that the average amount of time that passed from the engagement volume peak to valley was 3.4 minutes, with the longest span lasting 6 minutes. Essentially, this means that they were able to rise to the top Oscars Twitter chatter for this amount of time.
Looking deeper at three specific examples and number of mentions for their Twitter handles, things get even more interesting. While the impact of Lady Gaga's tribute didn't die down to pre-performance levels for approximately 34 minutes, it took merely 6 minutes to peak and another 7 to reach its half life. We see similar results with Patricia Arquette and original song winners Common and John Legend as well, although on a smaller scale.
Account(s) Tracked | Moment | Approx. Total Moment Impact | Number of Mins to Peak | Number of Mins from Peak to Half Life |
---|---|---|---|---|
@LadyGaga | Sound of Music Tribute | 34 Minutes | 6 minutes:11:21PM, 10.1K Mentions | 7 minutes:11:28PM, 4.7K Mentions |
@PattyArquette | Wins Best Supporting Actress | 20 Minutes | 4 Minutes:9:58PM, 3.2K Mentions | 5 Minutes:10:03PM, 1.2K Mentions |
@Common, @JohnLegend | Wins Best Original Song | 10 Minutes | 3 Minutes11:09PM, 10.7K Mentions | 4 Minutes11:13PM, 5.2K Mentions |
NOTE: Half life here is defined as the amount of time for total mentions to reach half the amount of the peak moment.
All in all, brands had about three minutes to jump in the broader conversation about the awards overall (tweets using hashtags like #Oscars, #Oscars2015 or #AcademyAwards and mentioning @TheAcademy), and anywhere from 7 to 13 minutes to join the chatter about the celebrities themselves (@LadyGaga, @Common, etc.).
Methodology:
Top Moments: We analyzed all tweets that mentioned @theacademy, @actuallynph, #oscars, #theoscars, #oscarscreators, #oscars2015, #theoscars2015, #academyawards, #academyawards2015, #nph, #neilpatrick, #neilpatrickharris
Account Drilldown: We analyzed all tweets that mentioned @LadyGaga, @PattyArquette, @Common, @JohnLegend
Source:
Twitter data provided by Unified (www.unifiedsocial.com)