Alone Yet Still Alone – How The Academy Award’s Most Obscure Nominee Became It’s Most Talked About

The 86^th Annual Academy Awards air March 2 this year with host Ellen DeGeneres.  The timeframe between the announcement of the nominees and the big show is a harried, frenzy time for film publicists looking to get their nominated film in the best position to grab Oscar gold.  Major studios pump millions of dollars into the system in order to garner a nomination and, hopefully, a win.  Big prestige pictures such as Steve McQueen’s 12 Years a Slave, Martin Scorsese’s The Wolf of Wall Street, Alfonso Cuaron’s Gravity, and numerous others are released and promoted for months on end, both externally to the public and internally at big insider galas and events publicizing the film for awards consideration amongst the numerous awards-giving groups that help build buzz and eventual Oscar glory.  These are films that have been talked up around inner Hollywood circles for months now in the lead up to the big ceremony creating intricate narratives: Matthew McConaughey finding career redemption, Bruce Dern achieving respect and acclaim in the twilight of his career, 12 Years a Slave capping a vital year in black cinema.  However, there is one little film that definitely won’t be mentioned that night but has crafted its own very unique Oscar season narrative.

The film, Alone Yet Not Alone, was announced as a Best Song nominee with the rest of the above films.  The Christian-themed film about two young sisters kidnapped by Native Americans during the French and Indian War had its nomination revoked by the Academy’s Board of Governors.   So, what happened here?  And what lead to the Academy taking such a major step against one of its most minor of nominees?  The story behind this reveals how what could have been considered bad news might end up doing wonders for the small Christian-themed film at the box office.

The Super Bowl and IMC: What Place Does Social Media Have In Corporate Strategy

What role does a company’s communication play in day-to-day operations?  Argenti, Howell, and Beck argue in MIT Sloan Management Review that “strategic communication is inextricably linked to corporate strategy.”( http://bit.ly/1aWvfVH) With the continuing social media revolution and continuing innovations in how we speak and communicate with each other, company’s need to make sure strategic use of these new communication tools is effectively used and really become a part of their overall strategy.

When developing an IMC program, every element needs to align and create a specific message that best communicates a company’s branding message and selling point.  Social media is merely a new tool that needs to fit in and be used in an innovative fashion in order to get the most out of every opportunity.   Erik Qualman diagrams several ideal ways that an organization can structure their social media communications in the most ideal manner.  Qualman’s conclusions indicate that “the more ingrained social media was within a company, the closer it came to an ideal structure…it was organized communication.” (Qualman, 2013, pp. 231-232)  Each social media communication model has its pros and cons but one in which the entire organization is involved with a central idea of what and how they should be communicating over social media provides the best way to integrate into an organization’s overall strategy.

Aligning these social media channels with other IMC elements can be a challenge but one that is quickly becoming a regular facet within the marketing realm.  We’ve just come out of the biggest advertising event of the year: the Super Bowl.  Every year, millions are spent on 30-second ad buys in the hopes that it will produce a conversation and viral Internet attention that will increase brand exposure.  More and more, however, companies seem to be artificially enhancing media exposure through social media channels to extend those multi-million ad buys far beyond what they could have gotten a decade ago.  The above Scarlett Johansson ad for Sodastream was leaked earlier as a banned ad due to an innocuous, easily edited line about Coke and Pepsi but because they submitted this one first, it gained a bit of notoriety and they were able to pump out a few extra days of Sodastream mentions through viral social media mentions.

The above 30 second ad for the new Amazing Spider-Man movie also played during the big game but conversation about the movie extended far beyond its initial showing.  Sony wisely placed a Spider-Man hashtag at the end of the ad extending the conversation for the movie over to Twitter.  There, a new nearly four minute advertisement with even more footage for the movie was released on the official Sony Youtube channel.

Sodastream and Sony used smart traditional advertising buys and extended their message out through other communication channels over the biggest advertising day of the year.  These are just two examples from the day that used a smart IMC plan to integrate social media across their corporate strategy and create an alignment between each, separate part.

Works Cited

 

Qualman, E. (2013). Socialnomics: How Social Media Transforms the Way We Live and Do Business. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

 

Introductions, Salutations, Etc.

Hello Internet!

Welcome to my Social Media Strategies and Tactics blog.  As some of you may know, my name is Nash and this will be my central social media identity over the course of my IMC graduate program.  More specifically, this blog has been created in connection with my Social Media Strategies and Tactics class but hopefully it will remain updated past that as well.

I've done some blogging in the past, mostly in connection with bigger sites but I have done some personal blogging as well.  These were mostly movie and entertainment related.  The one I'm probably most proud of was a film review blog that I updated pretty regularly for a while but, unfortunately, couldn't find the time to keep going with AS real life commitments kept getting in the way.  It has now long since been abandoned.  If you're at all curious about it, you can find it here.  As will become evident, I'm sure, over the course of the semester, I have a real obsession with the film and television industry and everything related to it.

I feel its important to develop a consistent, constantly updated presence and identity in the social media sphere and I feel I've really dropped the ball on that.  With the help of this class and the connective social media tissue (Blogger, Twitter, Pinterest) that I must develop for it, I hope to create a following, of a sort, that I can hopefully build upon and really learn how to nurture and cultivate.

Anyways, I look forward to going on this journey with all of you and I leave you all with this video that I think really sums up how important social media is to the future of the communications industry.  For those in my Social Media Strategies and Tactics class, I'm sure it will be very familiar.

Oh, and of course follow me over on Twitter @nashridc and over on Pinterest, username Lotsofnames.