Being the data-obsessed social marketers we are, we tracked Oscar nominees in the uberVU dashboard for a month prior to the event. Our question: which social media metric was the best predictor of the actual winners? The stats we compared for each category were: highest sentiment score, largest number of positive mentions, smallest number of negative mentions, or the largest volume of total mentions for each movie, actor/actress, or director.
Here are the results!
Lead Actor
Oscar Winner: Daniel Day-Lewis
Best Social Metric Predictors: Sentiment score, Number of positive mentions, Overall mention volume
Lead Actress
Oscar Winner: Jennifer Lawrence
Best Social Metric Predictors: Number of positive mentions, Overall mention volume
Best Picture
Oscar Winner: Argo
Best Social Metric Predictors: Number of positive mentions, Overall mention volume
Best Director
Oscar Winner: “Life of Pi” Ang Lee
Best Social Metric Predictors: Sentiment score
“Positive Mentions” and “Overall Mention Volume” trump all other data points!
While we would never suggest that the Academy phone a Facebook friend, we do think it’s interesting that the number of positive mentions and the Overall Mention Volume accurately predicted winners in 3 of the 4 categories we tracked. While the sentiment category was often a good indicator of the winner, it didn’t take into consideration the volume of conversation a particular nominee garnered.
That’s a negative.
We found that watching for the nominee with the lowest negative mention count was probably the least accurate predictor of an Oscar winner. Comparing the smallest number of negative mentions most often identifies who in the group is generating the least social chatter. The negative mention sentiment holds the most statistical significance when comparing positive and negative mention totals within a single brand or between two brands with similar mention volumes.
Fun Fact:
People aren’t “Miserable” about Les Mis! While one might think that Les Miserables viewers might spur some melancholy conversation, just the opposite seems true with over 16,000 positive mentions about the film in the month leading up to the Oscars.
While the number of positive mentions about a nominee and overall mention volume often indicate the final winner, the Oscars selection process is definitely not a popularity poll. However, we’ll surely be checking the uberVU data again next year when placing our Oscar-related bets!
If you’re interested in a tool that can help you make better social media marketing bets, go ahead and schedule a live, customized demo using your brand’s social media info.