On Day 4 of TIFF 2015, at an otherwise run-of-the-mill TIFF press conference like countless others at every film festival, a young reporter from Xtra Daily stepped up to the microphone.
His question was directed at Tom Hardy.
You know what happened next.
The media fallout from this interaction has been immense. Since the day it occurred, more than 1,000 online news articles have mentioned it in influential U.S. publications such as Yahoo!News, USA Today, and Vanity Fair. That’s some decent brand recognition for TIFF, right there.
Likewise, Mr. Hardy’s Twitter presence in relation to the festival has skyrocketed since the friendly back-and-forth. In the 31 days beforehand, the actor had been mentioned in conjunction with the festival a total of 495 times. Nothing to sneeze at, you might argue.
But in the six days since? 1,256. That works out to a pre-press conference daily average of ~16, and a post-press conference daily average of ~209.
As Oscar Wilde once said, and Tom Hardy once echoed, “There is only one thing in the world worse than being talked about, and that is not being talked about.”
Join us early next week for an extensive recap of TIFF 2015 in all its glory.
