The Oscars: Timing, Branding and YouTube

The Oscars is a fascinating study in branding.

It is highly viewed worldwide (somewhere between 42 million viewers and 1 billion viewers, depending on who you listen to).

Highly criticized (put under the microscope like few annual TV events).

And highly leveraged by brands everywhere (one report put the gift bag that each attendee receives worth more than $80,000).

Yet, there is one powerful (and ridiculously overlooked) lesson each brand can learn from….

Put Your Brand Where Your Mouth Is

Brands have to be “on the ready” in today’s “blink-and-it’s-gone” world (remember that amazing Oreo tweet during the infamous Super Bowl blackout that went viral?).

So leave it to master impressionist Jim Meskimen to leverage this annual phenomenon to organically promote his Soul Pancake series on YouTube.

The Oscars: A Study in “The
Wake Principle” of Branding

Besides being entertaining, it’s on point and the timing was vital, premiering just days before The Oscars being shown, garnering over 26,000 to date.

But what exactly was done?

And how can you apply it to your brand?

Let’s see what was done.

Jim applied “The Wake Principle of Branding” which is simple: A powerful brand, article, video or whatever makes a powerful cultural impression, leaving a wake in its path. (A wake here is defined as “used to refer to the aftermath or consequences of something.” In this case, it is the aftereffect left after a brand has made some mark, dent or disturbance in the marketplace).

So what Jim did was:

Recognize the power of The Oscars brand
Look at the enormous awareness it was generating as it led up to this annual event, and
Note the wake left by the millions of promotional dollars spent to drive it into the consciousness of the viewers everywhere.

And then, in the wake of their promotions, he used that awareness to create a video parody of the event itself.