What Can We Learn from This Years Oscar Ceremony

What Can We Learn from This Years Oscar’s

On Sunday night the stars of the silver screen attended the 90th annual Oscar ceremony. You will have seen the attendees and nominees blasted all over the media. But not everyone cares about the best films, actors or cast members. Some would say the real winners were the marketers and advocates.

Here is a brief summary of the winners:

At the start of the ceremony the host, Jimmy Kimmel, declared that a Kawasaki Jet Ski Ultra 310LX would go to the winner who delivered the shortest speech. It was not long until the Twitter wizards got #Jetskiwatch trending for the entirety of the 4 hour programme, which is of course great publicity for the product. The Jetski was taken home by Mark Bridges, the academy award winner for Best Costume Design for Phanton Thread for this 36 second acceptance speech. The lesson learnt is that you can get in the game if you’re willing to pay.

Days Inn hotel took to #Twitter to promote their brand by offering a free night stay in any Days Inn Hotel to any nominees who didn’t take home a trophy. The take-away here is that freebies go a long way. Last year each Oscar nominee took home a ‘swag bag’ worth $200,000, consisting of gifts ranging from personalised M&Ms to $55,000 VIP trip to Israel.

Walmart allied with three female directors, Dee Rees, Nancy Meyers and Melissa McCarthy to each create a 60 second short film inspired by one of the big-box retailer’s delivery boxes. The three ads were aired at the Oscars and viewers took to Twitter to review the #WalmartBox ad which was widely well received. Walmart teaches us that making your product personal to an event such as the Oscars is remarkably effective.

Understand the power of your words, personalise your brand to current affairs.
Make your brand the centre of a movement.

Here at LSPR we offer a two-day Branding course and a 1-day Influence and Impression Management course to give your brand a head start.