BACK TO THE FUTURE: 77TH OSCAR® TELECASTS AIMS
TO CONNECT INTERACTIVELY WITH ON-SITE AND HOME VIEWERS
By Joyce Schwarz, contributor for imediaconnection.com
Back in 2005, some of the first Oscar™ activity was chronicled by Joyce Schwarz, media futurist in her column on imediaconnection.com. It’s fun to look back and see what was happening then and compare it to six years later with the 2012 awards immersion into what FAST COMPANY calls ‘the most interactive night in TV history”.
The 77th Academy Awards back in 2005 featured a slate of interactivity designed to get the on-site and home audiences more involved in the Oscar broadcast. Aiming to capture the new ‘lean-forward’ viewers who want to be more involved in their media choices and selections, producers, promoters and marketing partners are adding a slew of new-media elements such as blogs, broadband clips, mobile phone text messaging, and even an interactive set featuring LED screens and floating video panels. Such leading media players as ABC.com, TV Guide Channel, GoldPocket Wireless, Sprint and Samsung are betting on advanced technology to encourage viewers to lean forward and get more involved in this Sunday’s broadcast.
Last year the ABC telecast attracted 44 million viewers—still a significant chunk in today’s splintered media environs. Oscar ® night is still appointment television and the second most-watched annual event, after football’s Super Bowl. For advertisers and marketers it’s a great opportunity to launch new marketing campaigns and aim at a stronger female audience than football attracts.
Watch For New Media FX
You’ve probably seen the stats—Reuters reports that ABC has sold out commercial time for Hollywood’s Oscars awards show, putting an average price of $1.6 million for a 30-second spot. Top advertisers this year include L’Oreal, CareerBuilder.com, McDonald’s, Anheuser-Busch, Home Depot and MasterCard. Despite the strong buy, media reports are dreary predicting a lower viewing audience for this year’s telecast than attracted all those loyal Lord of the Ring fans in 2004.
To add a new ‘wow-factor”, producers and marketers are assembling arsenal of interactivity. You might say, it’s a venture into new media FX – special effects to wow the more media savvy viewer, tele-webbers (those who watch TV and are online at the same time) and reaching out via advanced cell-phone messaging to connect 1to1 to an increasingly mobile viewer.
Video-enhanced Set
On-site at the Shrine Auditorium, the set created by production designer Roy Christopher promises to “blur the line between the performers and audience” breaking stages traditional fourth wall by winding the actual set out over the audience in a Wizard of Oz Yellow Brick Road curve. A 40-foot screen located in (yes, “in”) the stage floor and 26 screen panels floating over the audience will project moving images from current and past films. Don’t miss the 320 LED screens buried in the floor covered by 1 ½ inch thick sheet of Plexiglas allowing celebs, even those in high heels, to prance safely across.
To get even more close and personal with the audience, and also cut down on lag-time, Producer Gil Cates is using a low-tech technique of pulling some presenters off-stage and stationing them in the audience to make sure that every nominee is seen on camera and to reduce the latency factor of winners trekking to the stage.
Facelift for Oscar® Website
Even before the broadcast you can check out some of the new enhancements. Check out the new facelift at the Oscar® website (www.oscar.com) where broadband video clips give you behind-the-scene updates and a blog by broadcast producer Gil Cates adds an even more personal take on how it all happens. The site is dotted with contests and sweepstakes ranging from opportunities to predict the winners brought to you by Olay Regenerist to Cadillac’s invitation to users can vote in advance on their ‘favorite Academy Awards moment’ and are encouraged to tune in live to vote real-time on the best acceptance speech. Ad banners top the site and richer media from such major brands as Microsoft, Kodak, Olay and Cadillac V-series is available at 100K or 300K. To make sure you don’t miss the opening, digital countdown clock ticks down to showtime. Oscar®.com includes a tab enabling you to click right through to ABC.com (and ABC.com has a reciprocal banner).
ABC & ETV
At ABC.com viewers get a chance to join in on the Red Carpet extravaganza via the networks’ enhanced television initiative, which is basically an opportunity to tele-web and watch two screens at once online, and on television. The online programming starts with the pre-show where viewers can “Rate the Look” and styles of their favorite stars on arrival and participate in audience polls. Then they are urged to stay tuned to the Internet and their TV so they can input their guesses for category winners. The website promises to deliver more trivia questions and feature viewer comments. Of course, for media buyers it’s a great cross-platform buy and a chance to double your media impact and enhance your database with viewer emails and preferences. For more info on ABC’s ETV go to http://heavy.etv.go.com/
TV GUIDE CHANNEL UPGRADES
Vying for potential movie fans 24/7 attention in nearly 80 million households is the TV Guide Channel. Usually the screen for the channel is divided into two components that offer what they say on their website is “objective and subjective guidance” combining original entertainment with local program listings. Usually the top third or so of the screen features their video programming and listings fill the remaining two-thirds.
But following in the footsteps of their successful Grammy® special, spokesperson Brenda Lowry, director of communications, explains that the Channel will go almost full-screen again for their Academy Awards ® special pre-show coverage, “Joan & Melissa Live at the Academy Awards” at 3-5 p.m. PT and 6-8 p.m. ET. The move is a brave one for TV GUIDE channel since the listings are pushed down and confined to a few lines at the bottom of the screen. Text urges viewers to go to Tvguide.com for more online listing info, note there is also a TV Guide viewer response phone number for any questions and when I called during the Grammy pre-show the gal answering assured me that TV Guide wanted to know what I thought but that most callers were positive about the format. Lowry says that brands have been eager to get involved in pre-promotion for the special with Kraft stepping up to be involved in a cross-platform sweepstakes featuring outdoor billboards focusing on the theme “Guess the Big Mouth” on celebrity faces to promote of course, their new big mouth jar. A 78 x 33 Hollywood billboard was a big attraction here in Los Angeles. On the site you can click on the Oscar game and you’ll see a fun promo by M&M who’s featuring an Oscar® Party Bingo encouraging you to print out ‘bingo’ cards from their site and use the candies as your markers. Quite innovative!
GoldPocket Wireless Adds to the Mix:
On the heels of two other red carpet wireless awards show campaigns for the Golden Globes and the Grammy Awards, TV Guide and GoldPocket Wireless are adding real-time text messaging to their mix this year. When I talked with Gold Pocket Wireless President Stephen Leonard he explained that viewers watching the Red Carpet pre-show want to participate and now they can in three different ways using their mobile phones.
First, as in the previous two awards broadcasts with TV Guide Channel, viewers can use their mobiles to text in answers, using the short code 29273 (AWARD), to questions Melissa Rivers reads live in real-time on-air polls. Leonard explains that they’ve learned it’s more powerful to have the host like Melissa read the question than to just post it on-screen. Poll results are shown on-air and Leonard assures us that the viewer excitement and participation builds as results spur even more response to the next question asked.
Communicating cross-platform appears to be both a science and an art-in-progress. A sweepstakes tied to the program will encourage viewers to guess how many carats are encrusted on the diamond-encrusted microphones Joan and Melissa will use during their telecast. But the newest interactive feature and what Leonard says is “the killer app” is that this time users can text in their own questions in advance and a GoldPocket techie in an on-location mobile unit will help TV Guide producers feature questions which will be used on-air crediting first name or nickname viewer queries selected. Although the interactive segments are not ‘sponsored’ by brands, Leonard believes it’s a great opp for advertisers to cash in on what he says is the ultimate 1to1 messaging for brand awareness to drive enhanced marketing during and after broadcasts.
MOBILE SWAG
No mention of the Oscars® would be finished without talking about the SWAG or freebies for presenters and performers get. This year Sprint and Samsung say they are giving the gift of “global gab” by including the newest multimedia Sprint PCS phone by Samsung in the official Oscar® baskets. It said to be like a mini-TV, camera/camcorder and personal organizer rolled into one. Motorola is also tossing its much-coveted BLZR –black RAZR phone into the gift baskets as well. The real question is how many attendees and bleacher fans will be able to snap photos and record their own clips on-site at the Kodak theatre. A quick call to Kodak Theatre administration said all cameras and camera phones would be confiscated at the door by security. Hmmm I’ll check those mobile blogs anyway—in this day and age someone is bound to try to V-crash (Video crash) past the red tape. Verizon’s V-cast promises some highlights via video and other news2-go sites will probably have mobile highlights for those of us who can’t sit still until it’s over.
Joyce A. Schwarz, is an author and emerging entertainment consultant who heads JCOM, www.joycecom.com in Marina Del Rey. She’s been to the Academy Awards but will be watching from a big-screen at a pal’s house for this one, carrying along her laptop and mobile.
