It's Academy Awards weeks and every year at this time a seemingly unanswerable question emerges: Will the winners be those who receive the most public attention, those who are endorsed by the 'In Crowd', or those who simply earn the most positive reviews?
I've made a habit of watching the Oscars the last several years and will be glued to my television this Sunday while the event unfolds. Watching the Academy Awards is always a lot of fun, but I have never been too successful at predicting the winners. When the envelopes are opened I find myself in stunned disbelief more often than not. Seriously...'The Hurt Locker' was the Best Picture of 2010? Two years later and I'm still unable to explain that one.
In an attempt to ease my troubled mind, we here at Draftfcb's Customer Intelligence team have set out to see if we could find a leading indicator of this year's Oscar winners using social media data and some good old fashioned data analysis.
We have analyzed the social media buzz generated by the Oscars over the past year and have found three metrics that may point to winners: total impressions (i.e., public attention); influencer impressions (i.e., attention from the 'In Crowd'); and positive vs. negative sentiment (i.e., positive reviews).
For the top five Oscar categories -- Best Supporting Actress, Best Supporting Actor, Best Leading Actress, Best Leading Actor, and Best Picture -- we have projected winners based on the top performers for each metric. Our projected results are below and we will be back next week to see which of these metrics turned out to be the most accurate indicator of success.
Enjoy your Oscar parties and we will see you next week.
