Chrysler’s ads for the Fiat 500 starring Jennifer Lopez have become a lightning rod for the car’s disastrous launch. The Fiat 500 was supposed to be one of Chrysler-Fiat’s big global brands, and its answer to BMW’s iconic Mini. But in the US, the Fiat 500 is off to a dismal start since launching in March. It initially expected to sell 50,000 units in the first year, but so far, it’s only at 15,000. In fact, 29 of its 130 US stores didn’t sell a single one last month. No one believes that Lopez would drive through her old ‘hood in the South Bronx in a Fiat.

Then, in a brazen product placement stunt,  Jennifer Lopez featured a Fiat at center stage of her American Music Awards performance Sunday night.

Jennifer Lopez mentions within Fiat conversations

Lopez appeared in nearly 13% of all Fiat conversations online following the American Music Awards performance.

Fiat buzz

Fiat buzz peaked in early November.

Fiat sentiment

Negative buzz spiked dramatically following the American Music Awards performance.

Did Jennifer Lopez sell out?

Talk show host Regis Philbin ended his run on the popular television program “Live!” last Friday after 28 years on the air. Fans bid Regis farewell online using social media.

We used Social Radar to analyze buzz online.

Regis buzz

Conversations around Regis Philbin spiked to their second highest point of all time, falling just short of buzz in January 2011 when Regis announced he would be leaving the “Live! With Regis and Kelly” show.

Regis conversation topic cloud

Conversations around Regis Philbin were 87% positive during the final episode.

Content distribution

Approximately 49% of Regis Philbin mentions came via Twitter, while 42% came via blogs.

Gender distribution

More than 60% of Regis Philbin mentions online have been made by males over the past several days.

Regis left his show at a high point. What’s next for the legendary TV personality?

ABC’s new 1960s inspired TV show Pan Am launched the first “Twitter-powered flight,” encouraging users to tweet using the hashtag #panam to win prizes. The new series is a drama about stewardesses back when jet travel was glamorous. The show, along with The Playboy Club, is drawing obvious comparisons to Emmy-winning AMC series Mad Men.

Did Pan Am’s twitter promotion successfully generate buzz? We used Social Radar to analyze conversations online.

#panam buzz

The #panam hashtag conversation spiked dramatically during the show but subsided almost immediately.

#panam sentiment

Conversations around #panam were an average of 84% positive this week. Mad Men appeared in nearly 10% of all Pan Am conversations.

Mad Men vs. Pan Am vs. The Playboy Club

While Pan Am did generate more buzz overall than The Playboy Club, the new show has a long way to go to catch Mad Men buzz online. Mad Men is currently generating more buzz than Pan Am even though Mad Men is not during season currently.

As the UK’s Celebrity Big Brother heads towards its climax Social Radar looks at who’s in the running to win the Celebrity Big Brother 2011 title using online buzz around the main contenders.

When it comes to generating the most chatter around winning Celebrity Big Brother, Jedward are out in front as the share of voice chart below shows from 18 August to 1 September.

Since Celebrity Big Brother has been running, Jedward have achieved on average a 21% share of all conversations around who should win.  Overall the buzz surrounding this topic has fallen since the start of the show on 18 August and on 30 August Paddy Doherty overtook Jedward’s lead, albeit briefly.  When it comes to numbers Jedward have received 25,164 social universe results compared to Paddy’s 15,133. However volume of traffic alone is not necessarily a clear indication of winning.  By looking at the associated sentiment  Social Radar can define how the top housemates measure up in the popularity stakes based on posts by fans declaring who they want to win:

Level of positive sentiment

Kerry Katona – 40%
Amy  - 42%
Tara  - 46%
Lucien  -  57%
Jedward – 59%
Paddy – 64%

So based on social media buzz it’s not all cut and dried for the troublesome twins and Paddy power may pull through.  But of course it all depends on how their popularity fares over the final days of Celebrity Big Brother.

MTV aired the 28th annual Video Music Awards (VMA) Sunday night. MTV integrated social media into the experience, encouraging viewers to use social media and their various devices — tablets, smartphones, and their computers — in addition to tuning in via cable TV, to weigh in on the show.

We used Social Radar to analyze conversations online.

VMA mentions

VMA mentions more than doubled in 2011 compared to last year’s show.

VMA sentiment

Conversations around the 2011 VMAs were an average of 74% positive. Lady Gaga was the biggest topic of conversation, appearing in nearly 13% of all VMA mentions. Lady Gaga kicked off the night dressed as her male alter ego, Jo Calderone, and stayed in character the entire show. Beyonce, who announced she was pregnant, was the next most mentioned artist, followed by Britney Spears, Nicki Minaj, Justin Bieber, Jay Z and Miley Cyrus.

Content breakdown

Approximately 96% of VMA chatter came via Twitter, 46% of chatter was in English, and 60% of mentions were made by males.

Artist buzz

In addition to VMA mentions being up this year, buzz around Bieber, Gaga and Beyonce are also at their highest points of the year. Looks like MTV can still generate buzz about music at least once per year.

For further analysis, visit www.infegy.com/socialradar.

Using hashtags – # - on Twitter to make searching easier is now common practice, especially for the ever growing online community of users who tweet whilst watching TV.  More and more often viewers will see official hashtags appear at the start of programmes so they don’t have to think of their own.  However it seems that  the BBC’s popular series ‘Dragons’ Den -’ where entrepreneurs pitch their ideas to a panel of  investors - has bowed to the pressure of Twitter users by changing the official hashtag shown at the start of the programme early on in the ten-part series.  In episode one it’s clearly shown as #bbcdragons:

 

 
By the time we get to episode three of the series the hashtag has changed to
#dragonsden as shown below:

 
Why has the BBC done this?  Well if you look at Social Radar’s analysis of the two tags it
should become clear:

Since the series started on 31 July Social Radar has calculated that 192,528 mentions of #dragonsden occurred compared to just 28,915 of the official #bbcdragons.  The hashtag was changed on 14 August to #dragonsden and by episode 4 on 21 August there were only 60 mentions of the original #bbcdragons. 

The BBC has been prepared to drop its brand at the beginning of the tag to try and encourage a community of Twitter users who can easily follow each other’s tweets all from one source.  On the official Dragons’ Den website it displays the current tag and even asks tweeps whether they’ve seen a better one http://www.bbc.co.uk/apps/buzz/suggest-hashtag. Overall mentions have declined so it will be interesting to see how this trend develops during the remaining six episodes and whether the hashtag changes again.

With only hours to go before UK TV Channel 5’s series of Celebrity Big Brother (CBB) begins, Social Radar has taken a look at how the pre-launch buzz for this show compares with the last time Celebrity Big Brother aired on Channel 4 back in January 2010.

Social Radar calculated 10,202 overall mentions for Channel 4’s Celebrity Big Brother programme on 2 January 2010 – the day before the show launched.  Yesterday (17 August 2011) Social Radar calculated 24,062 mentions of Channel 5’s new version of  Celebrity Big Brother which launches today.  However when these figures are presented as share of voice on each pre-launch day a different story emerges:  On 2 January 2010, Channel 4′s Celebrity Big Brother’s share of voice was more than three times that of Channel 5′s from 17 August.

So what is the strength of sentiment towards the new series? These two pie charts tell us:

CBB Sentiment 2010

CBB Sentiment 2011

There’s 10% less positivity surrounding the CBB 2011 brand with the majority of all chatter debating whether ‘The only way is Essex’ star Amy Childs has pulled out as a housemate and who will replace her.

Twitter is the most popular media to convey conversations about Celebrity Big Brother on the pre-launch day and has changed only slightly with a 10% increase from 80% in 2010 to 90% now.  Five pm was the most popular time for posting in January 2010 whilst yesterday it was 11pm.  Channel 5 generated 4,122 mentions in relation to Celebrity Big Brother on 17 August whilst on 2 January 2010 Channel 4 only had 1,415.  However 70% of all the Channel 4 mentions were positive, whereas for Channel 5 this dropped to 60% positivity.

We’ll be bringing you more Celebrity Big Brother insight as the series unfolds.

MTV has partnered with iCondom to release the iCondom iPhone app, enabling users to search via GPS for the nearest place that sells condoms. Much of the information will be crowdsourced — users are encouraged to add dispensing locations and to provide quick tips like if the shop is open 24 hours or if a machine is broken.

We used Social Radar to analyze conversations online.

MTV and iCondom buzz

Approximately 75% of the MTV iCondom partnership mentions came via Twitter.

MTV and iCondom sentiment

Sentiment around the partnership soared above 90% positive this week.

Gender distribution

On average, 65% of the MTV iCondom partnership mentions came from males online.

Will the partnership help MTV’s Staying Alive campaign remove the taboo of buying contraceptives and improve global youth HIV awareness and prevention?

Wall Street had its worst day since the 2008 financial crisis, as fearful investors reacted to the United States losing its coveted AAA credit rating. All three major U.S. stock indexes sank between 5% and 7%, pushing the Dow below 11,000 for the first time since last November.

We reported on Friday that Jersey Shore was sadly generating more buzz on line than Obama and debt ceiling agreement. Though Jersey Shore buzz subsided over the weekend, the American public’s focus still does not seem to be on the economic crisis.

Stock market buzz

Neither the Dow nor stock market showed a significant spike in mentions despite today’s plunge resulting from the S&P’s downgrade of the United States’ credit rating by one notch to “AA+” for the first time in history.

As the stock market continues to crash and America is on the verge of default, what’s on your mind? I’m hoping its not Jersey Shore.

Jersey Shore buzz

Sadly, Jersey Shore buzz is at an all time high. MTV premiered Season 4 of Jersey Shore last night, filmed in Italy.

Surely with President Obama’s 50th birthday this week and all of the news surrounding the debt ceiling agreement, Obama generated more buzz than Jersey Shore…right? Wrong.

Obama vs. Jersey Shore

Jersey Shore buzz easily surpassed Obama buzz following the Season 4 premiere last night.

Jersey Shore sentiment

I guess we can at least take solace that the conversations around Jersey Shore last night and today have been primarily negative.