After recently writing about Super Bowl ads, such as Coca-Cola, and the different social media marketing efforts during the event, I decided to do the same for the Oscars and see what types of social media marketing seemed to be prevalent during the event. Overall, the Oscars were not as big on social media as the Super Bowl according to Twitter. The Oscars had a total of 8.98 million tweets during the entire event while the Super Bowl had a total of 24 million tweets. When comparing total social media activity overall, the Oscars had a total of 13.2 social media interactions compared to the Super Bowl's 47.7 million. This is an extremely large difference considering the time lengths of the events differ only by about half an hour. While these figures are far off from each other, it is important to note that for both events social interactions had increased by almost 200% from last year to this year.  Many thought the numbers would have been closer because the Oscars is supposed to be "the Superbowl for women" and many tend to believe that women are on social media more than men. However, the Oscars didn't have a thirty minute blackout to invite all the viewers onto social media during the down time. Another factor may be the audience. The Oscars' audience may make a difference in the amount of social media interaction. The audience of the Oscars is probably older and more interested in watching the awards and are therefore less likely to be using social media during the event. The Superbowl, however, probably has a wider age range of viewers and tends to be more of a social event that will entice people to interact on the social web as well. 
       Due to Oreo's immediate posts in reaction to the Super Bowl's blackout, many brands now feel they should do the same and spend their time coming up with funny and clever comments on the fly. Companies are starting to participate in social media simply for the sake of being on there and aren't contributing meaningful comment, ultimately turning viewers away. While some brands got it right during the Oscars, like Smart Car who used Vine to post "smart sized" videos celebrating the winners, other brands missed the mark. The Onion, for example, practiced real-time marketing by insulting the nine year old girl, Quvenzhane Wallis, who was nominated for an Oscar. Real-time marketing shouldn't be completely avoided, but there does need to be a great deal of effort and thought put in it before publishing. 
       An article on PR Daily, entitled "Social media lessons from Oscars' real-time marketing", examines the efforts of the social media marketing of the brands mentioned above as well as outlining four lessons that marketers can take away from the Oscars. The first lesson is to fit the brand message to the event and moment. There should be a strategy behind your social media efforts and they should connect to the brand. Brands shouldn't be participating in social media just to do it. Another lesson is that bigger doesn't always mean better returns. Brands should find the events that their audiences are interested in and get involved with those. As mentioned earlier, just because another brand has had success doing it, it doesn't necessarily mean that it will work for your brand. You need to consider beforehand if social media will make an impact on your brand and if your audience is present in these platforms. The final lesson is that without the infrastructure in place to execute in real time, making social media work will be difficult. Preparation is key and the legal aspects need to be looked at ahead of time. So, while it may seem like providing real-time marketing is a quick and easy marketing tool for brands to use, it is actually something that needs to be used with great preparation and effort before publishing.  

~ Katie