We at The Practice were surprised that Sunday Night’s Academy Awards failed to garner more social media buzz. Looking comparatively at other recent National events such as the Super Bowl or the Grammys, the Oscars online hype fell short. So why was this the case?

While the Grammys recorded 14 million tweets and the Super Bowl clocked up a staggering 24 million, Oscar buzz paled in comparison with only 8.9 million tweets throughout the course of the ceremony telecast and Red Carpet action. The Practice team suspect that engagement at The Academy Awards is always going to fall short, because viewers tend to respond better to higher levels of visual and audio stimuli; something that The Grammys, for example, would produce thanks to big-name acts and musical performances. To prove this theory, one of the most buzzed about events at The Oscars was Adele’s performance of “Skyfall” which received 82,300 tweets per minute.

The Academy certainly took measures to expand its digital outreach this year by using strategies to help target a more engaged audience. The event’s team encouraged celebrities to tweet during the ceremony itself, and even trialed a new feature dubbed “The Magic Mirror” to allow stars to take backstage pictures and instantly post them online. This enabled celebs to take photo-booth style snaps whilst in the usually private Green room, and tweet them via the Academy’s official Twitter account. By allowing photos inside a restricted space, the Magic Mirror gave “access to fans at home a part of the show they never got to experience before”, said Twitter spokeswoman, Elaine Filadelfo. To further aid accessibility, the Oscar’s official site featured a variety of “instant replay” Red Carpet clips and highlights for viewers to share across social media platforms.

While the Academy emphasized online fan engagement, it seems that advertisers didn’t take advantage of integrating social media with their televised campaigns. However, in the wake of Oreo’s fantastic real-time Super Bowl tweeted campaign, brands felt compelled to follow in the company’s footsteps with many producing some great Vine and Twitter-based ads, but unfortunately not generating the same amount of hype. Smart Car’s Vine advertisement, for example, was cleverly executed in their tribute to “Best Actress”, as was Chobani’s Twitter advert poking fun at brands planning tweets weeks in advance before the Oscars- however, there was no standout campaign of the night.

Nevertheless, the most talked about moments from viewers aside from Adele’s performance of “Skyfall”, was Argo’s win for “Best Picture” with 85,000 tweets per minute, and Jennifer Lawrence’s win in the “Best Actress” category, which generated 71,600 tweets though largely due to her fall! (And thanks to the beauty of online technology, the unfortunate moment has now been immortalized in GIF form on BuzzFeed’s Twitter account.) The incident perhaps garnering the most online hype and confusion was Michelle Obama’s onscreen appearance, in which she presented the award for “Best Picture”, live from the White House. The Practice team is still divided in opinion as to whether the Academy’s PR stunt was in keeping with usual protocol- perhaps it was an unusual move to use America’s First Lady as an ambassador and presenter for an esteemed movie industry event. Regardless, the buzz throughout the night, (while not matching those of previous National events this year), made for the most highly engaged Academy Awards to date.

Did you follow this year’s 85^th Academy Awards coverage via Twitter and Facebook? And we’d also love to know whether you used multiple screens to enjoy the action! Please tweet your thoughts and comments to us @PracticeDigital, and check out our Facebook page for all the latest.