Is it ironic that Miley Cyrus became this week’s most talked about star, despite not taking home any awards at Sunday’s Video Music Awards? Of course it is, but in today’s digital world, that’s not surprising. So just how much does online buzz count for boosting a celebrity’s brand, and more importantly, driving sales?  

The Practice team were surprised to find out that during Sunday night’s show, Miley’s performance with Robin Thicke of “We Can’t Stop”, “Blurred Lines”, and “Give It 2 U” generated more than 306,000 tweets, putting award winner Justin Timberlake in second place on the micro-blogging site. Even more astonishingly, her performance (complete with gyrating and tongue wagging!) was responsible for achieving more than triple the number of tweets sent during last year’s entire VMAs. And if this isn’t record-breaking enough, Twitter mentions of her eclipsed that of this year’s huge social media flurry- the Superbowl blackout, by approximately 80,000 tweets. Finally, the full extent of buzz was realized with Cyrus generating 4.5 million Twitter mentions, putting her ahead of Justin Timberlake with 2.9 million, and Lady Gaga with 1.9 million respectively.

So just how important was this social media buzz, and can improved sales really be attributed to increased traction? In the case of Miley, it’s certainly no coincidence that in the wake of Sunday’s events, her newly released single, “Wrecking Ball”, climbed to the top of Amazon’s “Movers and Shakers” column- a list which tracks and showcases songs that make the fastest ascent to the top of the charts. If we consider other celebrities who have boded well from social media buzz, one such example who immediately springs to mind is Lady Gaga. As with any brand, prolific celebrities have social media strategies in place to boost attention, and the team behind Lady Gaga were instrumental in using a unique social media formula to drive sales. Atom Digital, the marketing and branding company in charge of the campaign behind “Born This Way”, promoted the album through the social network gaming site, Zynga, allowing fans to complete tasks on “Gagaville”, a spinoff of cult favourite, Farmville. With each completed task, fans could unlock online versions of unreleased songs from the album, an approach which resulted in an impressive 13 million user downloads. It’s clear that for today’s celebrities, with Miley and Lady Gaga being exemplary figures, social media is arguably the most essential tool to attract news hype and those all-important final sales.

However, we personally think that the most legendary result to come from Miley’s performance must be Oxford Dictionaries’ decision to add “twerking” to its online site- groundbreaking stuff for sure! And if you were wondering how to use this verb in a sentence? Well, Oxford Dictionaries provides this helpful suggestion:

“just wait till they catch their daughters twerking to this song

twerk it girl, work it girl.”

All we can say to that, in all seriousness, is the power social media buzz has in not only aiding a celebrity’s publicity, but also in adding a host of new words to our lexicon!

Did you tune in to this year’s VMAs? What did you think of Miley’s performance? And more importantly, do you think that in today’s online society, social media buzz is more important for celebrity branding and success than awards and accolades? We’d love to hear your thoughts and opinions, so please tweet to us @PracticeDigital and share your comments on our Facebook page.