It’s finally here, the 2015 Toronto International Film Festival. The movies, the stars, the parties, the after-parties, more stars…it’s a date circled on the calendars of movie buffs for months.
And as the excitement builds and bursts forth, Twitter devotedly catalogues it all. The big question: has Tom Hiddleston, the pre-festival favourite, been able to maintain his social media dominance? All will be revealed below — but first, a word from the sponsors. TIFF’s sponsors, that is.
TIFF 15 has dozens of them. But for our purposes, we’ll look at some of the more major ones to determine what kind of chatter their sponsorship dollars are (or aren’t) generating:
Lead sponsor: Bell Major sponsors: Visa, L’Oréal, Royal Bank Program and Award sponsors: A+E Studios, BMO, Canada Goose, Cineplex, Grolsch, HSBC, Sun Life FinancialTwitter mentions of top sponsors:
- Bell: 149
- Royal Bank: 113
- Visa: 107
- Grolsch: 46
- L’Oréal: 22
- Cineplex: 8
- Canada Goose: 7
- BMO: 1
- A+E Studios: 0
- HSBC: 0
- Sun Life Financial: 0
Of Bell’s 149 mentions, 91 reference the TIFF Bell Lightbox, the festival’s home for its existing programs, initiatives, and events. Likewise, 33 per cent of all Royal Bank’s mentions were retweets of a single tweet that included reference to the RBC Avion Gallery — further evidence that venue sponsorship pays dividends.
Visa Infinite credit card holders have special privileges at TIFF, and it shows in the data: 47 of Visa’s 107 mentions contain the word “access”.
Equally positive for sponsor L’Oréal is that nearly a quarter of its mentions have also contained the word “amazing”.
And now, what you’ve all been waiting for. Below is a chart showing the increase of Twitter mentions each leading man and leading lady has accrued since our last analysis on August 20.
As one can plainly see, Mr. Hiddleston remains atop the popularity ladder as the festival kicks off, despite his mentions only increasing by 65 per cent since our last analysis. Honourable mentions go to Natalie Portman, Eddie Redmayne, Tom Hardy, and TIFF 2013’s beau, Benedict Cumberbatch, whose mentions increased by a walloping 9,700 per cent.
If he can keep up this kind of pressure, he should have somewhere around 45 billion mentions by festival’s end.
Stay tuned to our blog until September 20 to see who the Twittersphere crowns the King and Queen of #TIFF15 (and other cool stuff).
