Commentary

After Party: Here's Who The Oscar Really Went To...

Forget the nominees and the winners. "Silver Linings Playbook": Great movie and will have a huge secondary audience. "Argo": The plane has left the runway. "Beasts Of The Southern Wild": Well, maybe you could drive a few more downloads. "Django": You already have an installed base in Tarantino fans. The movies that benefitted most from the Academy Awards telecast and surrounding social media buzz are the ones that created the most curiosity. Therefore, they have created the most aftermarket value and deserve the most marketing investment in the days ahead.

So here are the Mark Papia After Party Oscars. The Marks, if you will. I have no categories. Let’s just file them all under “revenue.”

Les Mis: It's all about timing. I don’t think the Oscar performance from the cast did a lot for getting Les Mis back into theaters or creating secondary market momentum. But "Les Mis" is long enough and still early enough in its life cycle to warrant a limited engagement at theaters. If I were marketing "Les Mis," I would dominate the review and ratings sites. There’s momentum here. No need to let the car companies take it. Because when I look on movie sites, I see a lot of car ads.

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Life Of Pi: “What does it look like?” That has been the driving force behind this movie. It’s still relevant. I would create a campaign that drives awareness of Blu-ray and high-definition downloads. Maybe create an HD mobile ad. Use technology to highlight the technology in the aftermarket.

Lincoln: Daniel Day-Lewis had his wife on one arm and author Doris Kearns Goodwin on the other. I would promote the secondary market release of "Lincoln" on book review sites, high-end movie blogs (Film Comment) and position it as the history lesson and psychological study that it is.

Bond: The most tweeted name in post-Oscardom was Adele. The show didn’t just help "Skyfall" (already out for quite some time)... its Shirley Bassey-fueled extravaganza put the whole Bond catalog out there. So? Let’s get the catalog out there again. I’d create Bond social media destinations and advertise them, big, across all the movie review sites.

Having spent years working inside the Variety organization, I’ve been to many award shows in Hollywood, and interestingly enough, the After Party usually turns out to be the main event. Given recent developments in the digital market and digital’s dominance when it comes to certain aspects of movie marketing, that will likely be the case with this year’s Academy Awards.

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