Oscar 2015 Marketing Predictions

How brands will try to con­nect with view­ers before and dur­ing the Acad­e­my Awards.

Lisa Lacy By Lisa Lacy. Join the discussion » 0 comments

With a report­ed price tag of $2 mil­lion per 30 sec­onds of air time and an esti­mat­ed audi­ence of 43 mil­lion view­ers, the Oscars are per­haps a small­er scale, but more glam­orous ver­sion of the Super Bowl for adver­tis­ers. In fact, many themes that emerged around the Super Bowl are reap­pear­ing as mar­keters gear up for the 87th Acad­e­my Awards on Feb­ru­ary 22.


What you can expect from brands dur­ing the 2015 edi­tion of the Oscars? Here’s our pre­view of Hollywood’s biggest night.

More Puppies

While GoDad­dy wasn’t quite as suc­cess­ful this year, the hits just keep on com­ing for Bud­weis­er and its Super Bowl pup­py. And that has per­haps not gone unno­ticed by oth­er adver­tis­ers.

Real estate brand Cold­well Banker, for exam­ple, is rolling out a new 30-sec­ond com­mer­cial dur­ing the Oscars that it says will high­light the moment dog own­ers come home after a long day and are greet­ed by their best friends.

The spot, Home’s Best Friend, was post­ed Feb­ru­ary 11 and has near­ly 700,000 views to date.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uVGLpeftwYI

Accord­ing to Cold­well Banker, it fea­tures real res­cue dogs and “[cap­tures] the immea­sur­able joy pets bring to our home.”

The ad is tied to a broad­er part­ner­ship with pet adop­tion web­site Adopt-a-Pet.com, the Homes for Dogs Project, which seeks to find homes for 20,000 dogs this year. The brand says it is engag­ing its net­work of sales asso­ciates to help adopt­able dogs find homes through a vari­ety of tac­tics includ­ing host­ing adop­tion days and part­ner­ing with local shel­ters. Addi­tion­al canine con­tent, includ­ing behind-the-scenes footage of the TV spot, is avail­able on the Cold­well Banker web­site.

This will be the third con­sec­u­tive year Cold­well Banker has launched a nation­al spot dur­ing The Acad­e­my Awards.

Our pre­vi­ous spots have show­cased the joy of com­ing home, so this year it made sense to por­tray who’s on the oth­er side of the door,” said Sean Blanken­ship, chief mar­ket­ing offi­cer for Cold­well Banker, in a release.

More Teasers And Early Releases

It’s now more or less stan­dard prac­tice for Super Bowl adver­tis­ers to tease and then release big game spots ear­ly. And that’s a trend that seems to be car­ry­ing over to oth­er events as well.

I think that in gen­er­al, it seems adver­tis­ers are trend­ing toward teas­ing out or lever­ag­ing oth­er con­tent from their tra­di­tion­al media buys so the tra­di­tion­al TV com­mer­cial works a lit­tle hard­er for them than just a prime-time slot,” says Sarah Neal Simp­son, asso­ciate direc­tor of mobile and social plat­forms at adver­tis­ing agency R/GA. “That’s the nature of a more diverse media ecosys­tem. You want to get more bang for your buck and you want it to last as long as it can.”

Gen­er­al Motors lux­u­ry car brand Cadil­lac, for exam­ple, is teas­ing pre-Oscars con­tent with the hash­tag #Dare­Great­ly, which, a rep says, “is an expres­sion of a new iden­ti­ty, val­ues and behav­ior for Cadil­lac.”

The brand has post­ed a 90-sec­ond spot on its YouTube page with excerpts from Theodore Roosevelt’s 1910 “Cit­i­zen­ship in a Repub­lic” speech.

Cadillac’s refreshed mar­ket­ing com­mu­ni­ca­tions use it as a cen­tral theme, with all Cadil­lac social media, dig­i­tal and mar­ket­ing chan­nels being redesigned in sync,” the rep says, adding the brand will “run a few dif­fer­ent spots dur­ing the Oscars pre- and live tele­cast.”

The spots were pro­duced by Pub­li­cis.

More Feel-Good Content

A major 2015 Super Bowl theme was inspi­ra­tional con­tent. That includ­ed a huge num­ber of adver­tis­ers, such as Hyundai, Toy­ota, Nis­san, Dove Men+Care, Microsoft, Coca-Cola and McDonald’s.

Accord­ing to Matthew Clyde, chief strate­gist and pres­i­dent at inter­ac­tive agency Ideas Col­lide, emo­tion is how brands spark action in today’s mar­ket­ing world and that was a clear theme at the Super Bowl this year, which he expects to car­ry over to the Oscars as well.

Amer­i­can Express, for exam­ple, is report­ed­ly rolling out a cam­paign dur­ing the Oscars with inspir­ing celebri­ty con­tent and unit­ed by the theme #Jour­neyN­ev­er­Stops.

The cam­paign includes spots with writer/actress Mindy Kaling and singer Aretha Franklin and the mes­sag­ing, “We are all on jour­neys. The vision­ar­ies. The under­dogs. The artists. The long shots. The home­grown heroes who make every day a lit­tle bet­ter. Join us as we fol­low the sto­ries that will inspire your jour­ney.”

Beau­ty brand Dove, too, says it is part­ner­ing with Twit­ter on a feel-good ini­tia­tive meant to “change how beau­ty is reflect­ed to women on social media.”

Accord­ing to a press release, the effort, Dove’s #Speak­Beau­ti­ful cam­paign, will encour­age women to “real­ize the role our online words play in impact­ing our con­fi­dence and self-esteem.”

The brand says it will unveil new adver­tis­ing dur­ing the Oscars “to inspire social media change.”

It has also released a #Speak­Beau­ti­ful video that says over 5 mil­lion neg­a­tive body image tweets were post­ed in 2014.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_cncxoJPwBw

As a result, Dove and Twit­ter say they will encour­age women and girls to turn these ugly tweets into beau­ti­ful ones using tech­nol­o­gy that taps Twit­ter data to iden­ti­fy neg­a­tive social media con­ver­sa­tions about beau­ty and body image.

When a neg­a­tive tweet is post­ed, the tech­nol­o­gy will be used by Dove to send non-auto­mat­ed respons­es to real women, which include con­struc­tive and acces­si­ble advice to encour­age more pos­i­tive online lan­guage and habits,” a release says. “Advice will come direct­ly from social media and self-esteem experts who col­lab­o­rate with Dove and Twit­ter to empow­er women to speak with more con­fi­dence, opti­mism and kind­ness about beau­ty online.”

In a state­ment, Adam Bain, pres­i­dent of rev­enue at Twit­ter, said, “Dove has been a leader in sup­port­ing wom­en’s self-esteem and body con­fi­dence and Twit­ter is the nat­ur­al place for that con­ver­sa­tion to unfold, espe­cial­ly on the night of a major awards show.”

Echo­ing the sen­ti­ment in Coca-Cola’s #MakeI­tHap­py Super Bowl spot, Jen­nifer Brem­n­er, direc­tor of mar­ket­ing at Dove, added, “Ideas and opin­ions about body image are now flu­id­ly shared every sec­ond through social feeds and some­times we do not ful­ly real­ize the resound­ing impact of the words in even one post. The pow­er to #Speak­Beau­ti­ful is in the hands of us all – we can pos­i­tive­ly change the way future gen­er­a­tions express them­selves online.”

More Brand Integrations

Clyde says he expects to see addi­tion­al prod­uct place­ment this year after Samsung’s major suc­cess in 2014. In fact, Clyde says he sus­pects that’s part of the rea­son the Oscars have tapped hosts like Ellen DeGeneres and Neil Patrick Har­ris, as they have a lot of social clout and can tie in brands. How­ev­er, how exact­ly that hap­pens in the 2015 Oscars remains to be seen.

But beyond sim­ple prod­uct inte­gra­tion with­in the broad­cast, Clyde also points to ful­ly inte­grat­ed cam­paigns that invite con­sumers to engage beyond the broad­cast as well on social net­works. In the Super Bowl, that includ­ed exam­ples like Squarespace’s Jeff Bridges Sleep­ing Tapes, the afore­men­tioned #MakeI­tHap­py effort from Coke, and Wix.com’s sup­ple­men­tal con­tent for its #ItsThatEasy spot.

More Gamification

In pre­vi­ous Super Bowls, brands like Coca-Cola have gam­i­fied their spots by ask­ing con­sumers to help deter­mine the end­ings. And, for its part, retail­er JCPen­ney is sup­ple­ment­ing its Oscars buy with com­pa­ra­ble inter­ac­tive dig­i­tal con­tent.

JCPen­ney says it will lever­age Oscar fash­ion to kick off its spring cam­paign by pre­mier­ing sev­en com­mer­cials dur­ing the broad­cast. Fea­tur­ing fash­ion sketch­es brought to life, the spots will high­light the brands found at JCPen­ney, which has been the offi­cial retail spon­sor of the Oscars for 14 years.

Our cus­tomer is our muse – she inspires every­thing we do,” said Deb Berman, chief mar­ket­ing offi­cer for JCPen­ney. “We are com­mit­ted to cel­e­brat­ing her style by show­ing how we bring fit and fash­ion togeth­er. Through our cam­paign, we will empha­size JCPen­ney’s strength in offer­ing styles that fit any shape, size, col­or, occa­sion and bud­get.” [Tweet ““Our cus­tomer is our muse – she inspires every­thing we do.” — Deb Berman @bermandeb, #CMO, JCPen­ney”]

JCPen­ney is also launch­ing the Look­book, or what it calls an online source of fash­ion inspi­ra­tion. The Tum­blr site will launch on Feb­ru­ary 22 and invite cus­tomers to share pho­tos of their per­son­al style using the hash­tags #JCPLook­book and #JCP­Style. The brand will also turn some of these images into fash­ion illus­tra­tions of con­sumers wear­ing looks from JCPen­ney’s spring assort­ment and offer chances for cus­tomers to be fea­tured in the Look­book.

The brand is also invit­ing cus­tomers to play its Oscars Play to Give game, which includes game cards with grids rep­re­sent­ing poten­tial moments from the red car­pet and awards show that play­ers can click on when a cor­re­spond­ing moments hap­pen live. JCPen­ney says the goal is to tap out as many squares that form a hor­i­zon­tal, ver­ti­cal or diag­o­nal line to earn points. Play­ers can choose to play indi­vid­u­al­ly or as part of group via Face­book or Twit­ter and can fol­low their progress through­out the night on a group leader­board, the brand says.

With more view­ers fol­low­ing live events using a sec­ond screen, the online game will allow JCPen­ney to engage with cus­tomers through­out the broad­cast, the brand says.

More Oscar Moments

The Acad­e­my Awards offer oppor­tu­ni­ties for brands to cap­i­tal­ize on moments, or cre­ate their own.  Anoth­er Oscar adver­tis­er, Dis­ney, brought an Oscar stat­uette to its Walt Dis­ney World Resort this week to give guests “a once-in-a-life­time oppor­tu­ni­ty to pose for a pho­to.”

Call­ing it the first ever “My Oscar Moment” at Disney’s Hol­ly­wood Stu­dios, Dis­ney says guests will be “immersed in all of the star-stud­ded back­stage excite­ment as they walk the red car­pet to pose with the Oscar against a sig­na­ture back­drop sim­i­lar to the one used with A‑list stars on the big night” and notes this pho­to oppor­tu­ni­ty is the first that gives fans the chance to pose with an Oscar since 2012, dur­ing the Meet the Oscar event in New York.


What do you expect to see from adver­tis­ers relat­ed to the 2015 Oscars broad­cast?

Lisa Lacy

Written by Lisa Lacy

Lisa is a senior features writer for Inked. She also previously covered digital marketing for Incisive Media. Her background includes editorial positions at Dow Jones, the Financial Times, the Huffington Post, AOL, Amazon, Hearst, Martha Stewart Living and the Dian Fossey Gorilla Fund.

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