Summer movie season is officially underway, so we decided to use Social Radar to analyze conversation around some of the hottest new movies to open within the last month: Hangover 2, XMen: First Class, Super 8, Pirates of the Caribbean, Kung Fu Panda and Bridesmaids.
Summer movie buzz
Hangover 2 generated the highest spike around its release, and has generated the most buzz overall this month, followed by XMen and Super 8. We will check back later this summer with analysis around Harry Potter, Thor, Captain America, Green Lantern, Transformers 3 and more.
Sunday night MTV hosted its annual Movie Awards. This year’s show, hosted by Jason Sudeikis, included a kiss by Robert Pattinson and Taylor Lautner, and a crotch grab by Mila Kunis and Justin Timberlake. Pattinson also gave an awkward tribute speech to Reece Witherspoon for the MTV Generation award.
We used Social Radar to analyze conversations online.
MTV buzz June 2009 – present
Chatter around MTV is currently at its highest point in the last two years.
MTV sentiment June 2009 – present
Sentiment around MTV is also currently at its highest point in the last two years.
MTV chatter June 5-6, 20111
The Movie Awards are currently dominating conversations around MTV, being mentioned in 17% of MTV posts. Robert Pattinson is currently being mentioned in 11% of MTV posts.
Personally, I’m just glad that the Movie Awards are generating more buzz for MTV than shows like 16 and Pregnant and Jersey Shore.
Elizabeth Taylor died Wednesday of congestive heart failure at age 79. Last week, rapper Nate Dogg died of a heart attack at the age of 41. Fans paid tribute to both online via Twitter, remembering the stars’ careers.
We used Social Radar to analyze conversations around both stars.
Liz Taylor and Nate Dogg chatter
Liz Taylor generated slightly more buzz than Nate Dogg online this month.
Content distribution by category
Twitter was the primary source of chatter for both stars, accounting for more than 90% of conversations for each.
With many blogs and news outlets calling last night’s Academy Awards show “boring” and a “disaster” we decided to use Social Radar to run analysis around conversations online.
Oscars buzz 2010 vs. 2011
Overall buzz around the Oscars was down 17% vs. last year.
Academy Awards conversation topic cloud
Most topics of conversations around the 2011 Oscars were positive (green).
Overall sentiment was 86% positive.
Was James Franco high?
Many speculated that James Franco hosted the show high. Our analysis shows that the words ‘weed’, ‘stoned’, ‘pot’ or ‘high’ are currently appearing in around 9% of conversations mentioning Franco.
Netflix has made clear that the future is streaming, and the company expects its DVD-by-mail business to peak in 2013, at which point its Watch Instantly streaming service will be driving its growth. Netflix posted on their blog Monday that they would be removing the “Add to DVD Queue” option from streaming devices, causing some fans to get angry.
We used Social Radar to run analysis around Netflix conversations before and after Monday’s announcement.
Netflix conversation topics 1/1 – 1/16
Netflix sentiment 1/1 – 1/16
From January 1-16, all major topics of conversation were positive (green) and overall discussions around Netflix were 72% positive.
Netflix conversation topics 1/17 – 1/19
Netflix sentiment 1/17-1/19
In the past few days following the announcement, we see a lot more negativity (red) in the topic cloud, with conversations around the removal of the “Add to DVD Queue” being negative. Overall conversations around Netflix within the past few days have dropped to 68% negative.
Will Netflix customers fully embrace the company’s future vision and abandon their beloved DVDs?
The Social Network was one of the big winners at the 68th Annual Golden Globe Awards on Sunday night, taking home honors for Best Picture, Best Director and Best Screenplay and thus reinforcing Facebook’s place in the cultural zeitgeist.
Natalie Portman won Best Actress for her performance as a ballerina on a death spiral in Black Swan, and Colin Firth was selected best Actor for his portrayal of a stammering George VI in The King’s Speech. View the full list of winners.
We used Social Radar to analyze conversations around the Golden Globes.
Golden Globes conversation topics
Golden Globes sentiment
Overall conversations around the Golden Globes were 83% positive.
Ricky Gervais sentiment
One of the most discussed topics of the night was host Ricky Gervais. The sentiment chart above shows the discussion around Gervais was highly negative. Only 57% of comments mentioning Gervais were positive. The word ‘rude’ appeared in nearly 6% of posts mentioning Gervais.
Golden Globes buzz
We ran further analysis around all of the night’s big winners. The chart above shows the most discussed Golden Globes topics. The Social Network appeared in nearly 9% of Golden Globes related chatter, followed by Ricky Gervais, Colin Firth, Natalie Portman, Glee and Christian Bale.
We used Social Radar to analyze online conversations around the top 100 grossing movies of the year to determine the top 10 most talked about movies of 2010:
1. Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows
2. Inception
3. Alice in Wonderland
4. Toy Story 3
5. The Twilight Saga: Eclipse
6. Iron Man 2
7. The Social Network
8. Shrek Forever After
9. Sex and the City 2
10. The Karate Kid
Discussing buzz around hot topics. This week we cover Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook’s CEO and his $100M donation, Blockbuster’s bankruptcy, and the new Fall TV season.
Many experts speculated that negative word-of-mouth caused the sharp sales decline for Brüno, as social media sites like Twitter are enabling word-of-mouth to affect releases instantly. Time magazine said Brüno could be the first movie defeated by the Twitter, and that Friday is the new weekend when measuring box office success.
Brüno was a trending topic on Twitter throughout opening weekend. We decided to use Social Radar to analyze the sentiment of comments posted on Twitter throughout the last week.
Sentiment was overwhelmingly positive leading up to the opening, with more than 90% positive comments on July 6. But as the movie opening on July 10, the number of negative comments increased sharply, with almost 50% negative sentiment on opening weekend. Words like rotten, uncomfortable and gross appeared frequently throughout posts.
Twitter and other social media sites are empowering consumers to make more informed purchase decisions. With this new level of transparency and instant consumer reviews, product launches cannot hide behind marketing to tell the story.
As we discussed in our post about the angry United Airline customer who gained massive attention with his YouTube complaint, consumers are influencing each other directly more quickly and on a larger scale than ever before. How can companies maintain control of their brands in today’s transparent world?
Twenty years ago, when a customer had a bad experience and decided to complain, he told a few friends and that was that. Today, a customer can share a bad experience with millions of people instantly through blogs, Twitter, Facebook and other social media tools. And when that customer happens to be NBC Parks and Recreation star Aziz Ansari, people listen.
Ansari went to the AMC Theater in Burbank on May 11 to see Star Trek: The IMAX Experience. He sent out a tweet that night claiming he was charged an extra $5 for a slightly bigger screen and not the full IMAX experience. Ansari then wrote a blog post asking readers to boycott fake IMAX experiences at Regal and AMC Theaters.
Slashfilm made a post on Digital IMAX supporting Ansari. CHUD and New York Magazine followed suit. Within hours, Ansari tweeted that he also had the support of Deadline Hollywood, Fark, Buzzfeed, Rotten Tomatoes, Onion AV Club, CinemaBlend, Collider and more. His story made the Digg homepage with 2435 Diggs.
Richard Gelfond, CEO of IMAX, defended IMAX against Ansari’s rant and other blogs covering the issue. Though he seemed to brush off Ansari’s comments, saying, “The overwhelming majority of comments on that guy’s blog this morning, more than 90% of them, are vehemently disagreeing with him. And consumers are confirming this with their continued purchases of tickets.” Ansari blogged a response, asking others to share their experiences online.
How much impact can one person have? Check out the trend chart below measuring online chatter. Positive sentiment around IMAX was extremely high the week leading up to Ansari’s rant, with more than 80% positive chatter. Positivity has gone down sharply to 60% over the past two days, with negativity shooting up from less than 10% to nearly 40% of IMAX posts.
We also analyzed keywords around the word IMAX over the last few days. The word fake appeared in 8% and Ansari appeared in 5% of posts. Will the chatter lead to a decrease in customers? How do you think IMAX should respond? Is your brand prepared to handle the power customers have today?
