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10 Oscar-Worthy Examples of Brands Newsjacking the Academy Awards

by Steve Hall

Date

February 25, 2013 at 1:01 PM

oscar newsjacks

While many people are critiquing the $1.6 million commercials that ran during the Oscars last night, we thought it'd be fun to take a look at something a bit less expensive and a bit more inventive -- the real-time newsjacking that occurred last night during the broadcast over one of our favorite social networks, Twitter.

Newsjacking refers to the practice of capitalizing on the popularity of a news story to amplify your sales and marketing success. The term was popularized in David Meerman Scott's book Newsjacking: How to Inject Your Ideas into a Breaking News Story and Generate Tons of Media Coverage. 

No less than ten brands went into high gear developing tweets that riffed on the Oscar broadcast as it happened. Much of this newsjacking was captured by the hashtag #oscarsRTM created by Edelman's David Armano. Follow along as we take a look at how some brands approached newsjacking

1) Charmin

As the red carpet entrances occurred, Charmin wasted no time encouraging the stars to make sure they look down before they set foot on the carpet.

Charmin has always done a great job on their Twitter account with, well, potty humor. (Quite appropriately.) But the contrast between the red carpet event and what essentially boils down to toilet humor can't help but make you smile.

2) Special K

Also capitalizing on all the red carpet action was Special K, who worked with Edelman to create a series of Oscars-themed images to capitalize on events in real time. While I'm not really sure I want my cereal to be a cracker, I will say Special K had a great presence during the Oscars last night with several witty takes on the evening. Here are some of the highlights:

The brand also got specific when Life of Pi won for cinematography and special effects.

And when Life of Pi VFX supervisor Bill Westenhofer's acceptance speech ran a bit long, he was "played off" with the Jaws theme (planned by the organizers to cut off long-winded speeches). The Special K marketers wasted no time jumping in and having some fun with a famous quote from the movie.

3) U.S. Cellular

U.S. Cellular came up with a collection of images to promote during the Oscars broadcast which offered commentary on the evening's happenings. They were humorous, and played upon the faux uber-seriousness of the night, helping lighten the mood a tad with a natural, punny tie-in to their brand's services.

4) Oscar Meyer

Oscar Meyer had quite a bit of fun with the James Bond Skyfall win for Best Song. Not to mention the fact that bacon is one of those things that -- and I never thought I'd say this -- has really exploded as a pop culture icon as of late. James Bond and Bacon: A killer combination, in more ways than one.

5) Visa

Oscar Meyer wasn't the only one with something to say about James Bond. Visa threw in their two cents, too, with this rather touching tribute to the series' long-running success.

6) American Express

American Express wasted no time associating Oscars' gold statuettes with its own version of the gold. If you're newsjacking, trying to find a natural tie-in with your brand is essential!

7) Stella Artois

Beer brand Stella took a direct approach to their Oscars newsjacking, acknowledging Christoph Waltz by name, who took home a Supporting Actor statue. But the best part of this newsjack wasn't this first tweet ...

... It was this one, where the brand capped off the night with, what else, an empty glass of beer.

8) JCPenney

Ensuring the red carpet itself was properly taken care of before, during, and after all those well-dressed Hollywood stars trampled all over it, JC Penney gave Dyson vacuums a little love in this well-designed and clever tweet.

The brand also suggested that all those stiletto-wearing actresses consider wearing a pair of flip flops instead. No kidding.

9) Chobani

Capitalizing on the mispronunciation of Quvenzhané Wallis, the youngest Best Actress nominee ever for her work in Beasts of the Southern Wild, both JCPenney and, more humorously, Chobani, had something to say.

We love that brands were sweet and playful with the young nominee -- if you're going to interact with young stars on Twitter, it's obviously best to keep it nice. I say "obviously," but as we all know, not all brands always remember that.

10) Oreo

Oreo, the brand that successfully jumped all over the power outage during the Super Bowl, was out in full force last night. As if we'd expect anything less.

What's cool about these tweets is they're actually motion pics -- Oreo thought beyond what most brands did, newsjacking with pretty pictures and quippy swaying.

And, of course, to those who chose to watch AMC's The Walking Dead instead of celebrities trotting down the red carpet, Oreo gave you some love:

Hey, not everybody wants to watch award shows.

Image credit: Adarsh Upadhyay

What other Twitter newsjacks from last night's Oscars did you think were particularly crafty?

Comments

Karl Pearson-Cater 1:22 PM on February 25, 2013

I think this is more "real-time marketing" or "event-jacking" rather than "news-jacking". Right?

Steve Hall 1:43 PM on February 25, 2013

Karl, while we could certainly quibble over these terms for years -- us marketers are great at that - I'd argue real time marketing isn't based on events or news. It's really more of an ad server approach to delivering the right content to the right person at the right time based on their cookied history. Newsjacking isn't an ad server function. It's humans immediately delivering relevant content at the moment an event or piece of news is happening.

Rohit Bhargava 4:52 PM on February 25, 2013

Nice compilation Steve - long time no talk! What was most interesting for me was how many of these "real time" tweets and images were clearly produced a few days before the event and probably vetted and ready to go by the time the Oscars started.  
 
Nothing wrong with "prescripted real time marketing" like this ... but it does make something like Oreo's comment on the Super Bowl blackout that much more impressive since it was clearly done by someone with the authority and talent to create great stuff throughout the night. 
 
Some of these brand executions seemed to be little more than someone taking some good pre-created images and pressing the publish button. Also, check out Jay's interesting takeon some brand misses here (a different view on some of the same ones you mentioned).

David Allen 8:04 PM on February 25, 2013

Did no one notice the one brand that truly owned the oscars last night? From the red carpet on E!, to 2nd and 3rd screen engagement during, and a full engagement post show on E!, all while being the only brand to have a cause marketing integration. Skinnygirl Cocktails, the fastest growing spirit brand, kept the conversation going from start to finish and donated $2,500 to Dress for Success for every red dress seen on the red carpet; and they shared recipe content along the way. 
 
Loving what all the big dogs did...but let's be serious here. Skinnygirl Cocktails deserves a tip of the hat at the least.

Jonathan Trent 11:06 PM on February 25, 2013

I think Charmin's little marketing scheme was pretty brilliant. The Special K ads were not so much.

Larry Hingst 11:18 PM on February 25, 2013

None of these were Oscar-worthy.

Andrew Persad 11:19 PM on February 25, 2013

I am not sure VISA's post was better than AMEX's. Look at retweets. Agencies get too focused on entertainment and not enough attention goes into linking the product. The Visa post could have been from any other brand, just change the logo at the bottom - Tampax? Sure!

Cat Yaffe 11:58 PM on February 25, 2013

I'm inclined to agree with David Allen, whilst these are ok they're certainly not Award winning. Most of the Special K tweets were fairly non specific. Surely news jacking is just that - the jacking of a live event?

Collette Taylor 5:12 AM on February 26, 2013

If I was the brand guy for Amex I would be very concerned that with 625K+ followers this guerilla activity resulted in only 41 retweets. The other brands haven't faired much better - so really are these "worthy examples"?

Patricia Page 5:39 AM on February 26, 2013

I would like to see the ones they created but never got to use... i.e. if someone else had won what would they have shared?  
Would be great if they tweeted/blogged... here's what we never got to share!

Collette Taylor 6:18 AM on February 26, 2013

The only truly original one that really deserves a "worthy" mention is Artois with the personalisation - clever and clearly demonstrating "real time" marketing

Douglas Burdett 7:02 AM on February 26, 2013

The best newsjacking (or Twitjacking) are based on unplanned events like the Super Bowl power outage. Most of these were ads planned long in advance. Charmin's at least was funny. US Cellular was lame. Like Jay Baer said, most of these marketers saw what Oreo did at the Super Bowl and wanted to “get themselves some of that real-time marketing!”

Collette Taylor 7:15 AM on February 26, 2013

Douglas. Seems to me like a classic case of the "me too" syndrome!

Silvana 9:37 AM on February 27, 2013

Boring, formulaic and lame. Newsjacking needs to be spontaneous and funny.

Susan Newman 10:04 AM on February 27, 2013

Thanks for this fun post. Great way to start the day!

Rob Willox 1:20 PM on March 02, 2013

Interestingly as some of the Oscar-worthy examples some also appear in Jay Baer's 17 (mostly failed) Brand Tweets From The Oscars: http://www.convinceandconvert.com/real-time-marketing/17-mostly-failed-brand-tweets-from-the-oscars/ and some of these could be argued to be better as they got more retweets! Funny how the same things can be different as the same time (don't know if that even makes sense) :-)

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