Last week, the strange character known as Magic Cyclops began his 15 minutes of fame thanks to a memorable appearance on American Idol (video), and even he is surprised by it. His social media following has grown, he’s getting more gigs, and he’s guesting on radio shows across the nation.

But success, even if it was brought about by bizarrely deconstructing the most popular TV show in America, comes with a price. Yesterday, some wacky morning show DJs in Iowa brandjacked the Cyclops, saying that his entire act was an event they helped him plan five years ago. Bizarre. Needless to say, Thee Magic Cyclops — who has been performing music and playing the US Air Guitar circuit for at least 10 years — was not pleased. We contacted this legend of absurdity by phone and have this exclusive interview:

MP3: My Interview with Magic Cyclops (Click to listen.)

(In the interview, Magic decries lying the way the DJs did because “trees never lie, they don’t have to,” referencing his song “Angela There.” You can play it — track #8 from the gadget below.)

We also ran a quick brand audit with the Spiral16 web and social media monitoring platform to see what people across the Internet thought about Magic Cyclops’ American Idol appearance.

Because we can do that. Here’s some choice cuts:

From the IMDb boards (titled Magic Cyclops is my new God!): the best thing I have seen on Idol or in comedy in years. This guy was brilliant and nothing like those ridiculous and sad gimmick auditions. I kept thinking he was going to reveal himself as Christopher Guest. He is an improv GENIUS. Anyone who didn’t see how brilliant this guy was is either a baby or too brain-washed by TV’s mediocre fare to comprehend him. So glad I got to see this, now I can stop watching.

@Ally_0924 tweeted to actor Hugh Laurie: @HughLaurieBlues I watched American Idol last week and am completely convinced that you are Magic Cyclops

This blog had the contestants separated into the “Good” and the “Bad,” with Magic Cyclops filed last under the “Bad.”

Yidio: Magic Cyclops is from Davenport, Iowa, and has a terrible fake British accent. But he talks about his impressive air guitar collection and wins me over. He charms me further by explaining the accent by saying he watched a lot of BBC programming when he was younger, and refers to Jimmy Buffet as James Buffet (pronounced buff-ay). And yet, for all that build-up, his performance is a little lacking in zip. And then he closes out by requesting the theme music from “The Incredible Hulk” as he walks away. You know what? He might deserve to go in the “Good” column.

From the SurvivorSucks American Idol message board:

1. I think I dated Magic Cyclops during my brief college stint…
2. Best actor plant evah. 11,000 air guitars. Incredible Hulk music. I lol’d a couple of times.
3. I <3 Magic Cyclops
4. Magic Cyclops is no actor plant. He’s a brilliant, subversive, musical comic. He used to perform in Denver all the time until he recently killed off the character and came back briefly as a cyborg called Magic Roboclops. He also does a lot of the national air guitar championship competitions.

The Rochester City newspaper takes their Idol seriously: I’m not going to discuss Magic Cyclops, because that’s precisely what he wants me to do. Total waste of time, and this show should be embarrassed that it went along with his joke for as long as it did.

Access Atlanta: Magic Cyclops from Davenport, IA seems to be channeling his worst Russell Brand imitation. This is a horrific, time-sucking act. He gave judges a choice of Neil Diamond or Jimmy Buffett. Randy chooses “Cracklin’ Rose,” then “Margaritaville.” It’s absurd. He is a plant who isn’t even in the age limit. (This is no Larry “Pants on the Ground” Platt!) Randy walks out. Good move.

Magic is a divisive figure. Sentiment about Magic Cyclops' American Idol appearance since last week on the Internet is 51% negative and 49% positive.

My94.7fm: This audition was so random, that in my opinion was staged by Idol producers. The judges play right along like its a legitimate audition. The contestant comes in with dark glasses, wearing a bandana with “Magic” across his forehead dressed in a patriotic shirt. He introduces himself as Magic Cyclops and claims he’s running from gambling debts from Davenport, Iowa.

From the Rotten Tomatoes message board:

1. MAGIC CYCLOPS FOR PRESIDENT!!!!
2. Magic Cyclops is the best ever. Incredible wit – so quick.
3. He talks with a British accent because all they could get in his boyhood home was PBS.
4. I loved that. In fact I loved everything about him. Maybe he is a reincarnated drummer from Spinal Tap.
5. - Let’s see your eyes. – I don’t have any eyes. Haha. Best thing from American Idol in ages.

Like many of the commenters online, the conversation quickly turns to Magic’s already existing online assets, like his Facebook, MySpace, Bandcamp, and YouTube pages. Having web and social media monitoring available after a huge media appearance like his is essential in capitalizing on a new fanbase.

It’s also essential to have a social media monitoring system in place to capture the conversation, identify new fans and online influencers, as well as take the temperature of online sentiment. The online sentiment concerning Magic was decidedly split, with 51% negative slightly outweighing the 49% positive. All of this plays into creating an online strategy going forward, whether you are a personality, brand, agency, product, or service.

Thanks to Magic Cyclops for the interview and the music!

What does the volume of relevant web posts about each GOP candidate tell us about their electability?

After Newt Gingrich‘s big win in South Carolina this past weekend, we compared online sentiment between he and former (maybe current) frontrunner Mitt Romney using the Spiral16 Internet monitoring platform. Electability is a major issue for Gingrich supporters in that state, and both national polls and online sentiment prove that Gingrich still might have a problem in that area.

We’ve been running a case study on the race for the Republican presidential nomination since the beginning of the new year. The platform has collected online blog posts, news stories, social media results, forum discussions, and all other publicly available digital content in a sampling of two different categories for each candidate:

1. Raw mentions of the candidate

2. Specific mentions of the candidate in terms of the election itself

Comparing the volume of mentions against each other produced some pretty interesting results. It could be interpreted that the amount of posts generated in the red bars are a reflection of how electable the candidate is because each of these posts are only collected if they also contain language about the primaries or caucuses. The results in the red are more qualified in a general sense because of the language surrounding them.

Mitt Romney has a sizable lead in terms of raw online mentions and primary-related discussion. Does this speak to his electability?

Mitt Romney wins the battle in both measurements. Romney still has a higher raw count than any other candidate (9,000 more than Ron Paul) and how often he is mentioned in terms of the primaries (12,000 more than Newt Gingrich).

Ron Paul, whom people refer to as a fringe politician, has a large raw mention count due to his loyal Internet following, but the fact that he isn’t mentioned as much in terms of the election specifically points to his lack of coverage in mainstream outlets. He has almost 66,000 more raw mentions.

Newt Gingrich, on the other hand, has less of a chasm between his raw number of mentions and his qualified election mentions: a difference of around 44,000. Unfortunately, he is over 25,000 mentions behind Romney in raw count and 12,000 behind in the election-language volume count.

Rick Santorum, whose own buzz we analyzed after his Iowa win, doesn’t have a lot of good news in this study either. Rick Perry still has 6,000 more mentions in tandem with the primaries than he does, despite the fact that he dropped out before South Carolina. Santorum also has over 6,000 less raw results than Herman Cain.

Of the candidates no longer in the race, its worth noting that Herman Cain has over 71,000 raw mentions, but that is mostly due to the Stephen “Colbert bump” he received last week. Even with all the buzz surrounding Colbert, Cain still has has the lowest total primary mentions.

For those of you not interested in political data in the least, keep this in mind: There are so many different takeaways you can get from a robust set of online monitoring. Imagine what you could do with data about all the different things people are saying about your brand on the web, where they’re saying it, and what the sentiment for your business looks like. A clear picture of your brand ecosystem on the Internet allows you to benchmark, strategize, roll out an informed marketing plan, and change it on the fly.

When it comes to business intelligence, that’s pretty valuable.

How do national polls and exit polling compare to what is being said on the Internet about the Republican presidential frontrunners?

This weekend, Newt Gingrich landed a decisive victory in the South Carolina primary, giving the GOP presidential candidate 40.4% of the vote, with Mitt Romney a distant second at 27.8%. But he’s still got more work to do if he wants to overcome doubts about his electability.

Why did Newt Gingrich win in South Carolina? Perhaps the state responded to Gingrich’s aggressiveness in the debates. Or maybe it was South Carolina sending a message to the rest of the nation that this race is far from over.

According to the exit poll, 45% of South Carolina voters said the most important quality in a candidate was that he could beat President Obama in November. This was the number-one concern. 51% of voters who were concerned about electability voted for Newt Gingrich, while only 37% of those voters went for Romney.

Mitt Romney has a 4% larger share of positive sentiment in relevant online posts (a total of 24%) than Newt Gingrich.

But South Carolina isn’t in line with the rest of the country. An average of recent national polls shows that Mitt Romney is still more electable than Newt Gingrich. If the presidential election were held today, Obama would beat Mitt Romney by a narrow margin of 1.9%, while Obama would clobber Gingrich by a whopping 11%.

NewsOK agrees:

Recent national polls by Fox News and PPP show that Barack Obama’s average fav/unfavs are 49%-48%, Mitt Romney’s are 40%-45%, and Newt Gingrich’s are 26%-58% — lukewarm numbers for Obama and Romney, dreadful numbers for Gingrich.

But what does the Internet say?

According to data collected through the Spiral16 online monitoring platform, Newt Gingrich still has a bit of an uphill battle, though the margin of difference between he and Mitt Romney is significantly smaller.

Newt Gingrich has 3% more negative sentiment than Mitt Romney, for a total of 18% across the web.

Looking at all relevant web data across news sites, blogs, video sites, and social media since the beginning of 2012, Romney edges out Gingrich with 4% more average positive sentiment than the former Speaker of the House. Gingrich also has 3% more total negative sentiment on the web than Romney.

Romney’s sentiment rating is 24% positive and 15% negative, while Gingrich has 20% positive and 18% negative across unique web pages pertaining to each.

Average sentiment is calculated by the platform after looking for overtly positive or negative words that appear in the post. If sentiment is not determined to be overt in one direction or the other, it is classified as neutral.

Since many results come in from news websites, and not every web posting contains positively or negatively skewing sentiment, it is not common for a large percentage of the whole to be classified as neutral. Romney has a total of 61% neutral posts, while Gingrich has 62%.

The biggest splash Jon Huntsman has made in the Republican primaries on the Internet so far this year is the one he made yesterday when he decided to drop out.

Ouch.

Here at Spiral16, we’ve been running an online study of all the GOP candidates since the beginning of the year. Our web monitoring platform searches social media sites, but it also indexes all other publicly available URLs as well (news sites, blogs, video, etc.) — so the results being brought back go beyond social media.

Last week, we looked at Rick Santorum’s presence on social media sites and the rest of the web (and discovered it’s all sweater vests and sex acts — ha!). Today, let’s turn our attention to Jon Huntsman.

Not Much Difference Between Iowa and New Hampshire

After his third-place finish in New Hampshire (where he famously told his supporters that his support in that state was a “ticket to ride”), you may think that the amount of web conversation would have significantly spiked.

Not so much.

On January 10 — the day of the New Hampshire primary — Huntsman’s volume on the Internet rose only 6% from its highest point.

The biggest spike in web results for Jon Huntsman in 2012 came when it was announced he would drop out of the GOP presidential race.

That previous high was recorded on January 4, the day after the Iowa caucuses, where Huntsman placed last. Clearly, he didn’t receive all that more of a boost in terms of web volume from his third place finish in New Hampshire.

Of course, even at third, Jon Huntsman had less than half the popular votes of the winner, Mitt Romney, so that could have something to do with it too.

Biggest Increase After Dropping Out

Even though he didn’t make the official announcement that he was dropping out of the race until today at a media conference in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, it was confirmed last night by a Huntsman aide that he would, in fact, drop out of the GOP presidential race.

The news last night was big enough to cause a 24% rise in the amount of Jon Huntsman-related posts on the Internet, his biggest volume gain of 2012.

So while he may have been a long shot from the beginning of the GOP presidential race, at least Jon Huntsman can say he dominated election talk for one day in 2012.

Image: Christian Science Monitor

What messages from Republican presidential candidate Rick Santorum are gaining popularity on the Internet and in social media channels?

Talking points are everything in politics. Every candidate has certain key messages that they have decided upon and hope to be defined by during any political campaign. With any luck, these messages will be repeated ad nauseum in TV and print coverage, as well as finding a permanent home on the Internet and in social media channels.

One current GOP presidential candidate who has had much-publicized troubles with the Internet is Rick Santorum, whose anti-gay remarks in 2003 caused an entire community to redefine his last name as the byproduct of a gay sex act. Through a well-organized social media and web campaign, a site called Spreading Santorum containing that alternate definition rose to the top of Google’s search rankings.

That made me curious, so I used Spiral16′s advanced web-monitoring software to see not only how that definition was affecting his campaign, but to look closely at the other words that have been used the most online when referring to Rick Santorum since the beginning of the new year. Here’s what I wanted to answer:

Does Rick Santorum still have a Google problem and what are the trends that have defined his campaign?

I got some pretty interesting results.

This word cloud represents the Top 200 most-used words online surrounding Rick Santorum since the beginning of the year.

First off, why don’t you Google “Santorum” right now? As of today, Rick Santorum’s official campaign site is now number one, while SpreadingSantorum is number two. That’s a good start. I guess that almost-win in Iowa helped.

Looking at the list of words used the most often in web posts (from social media and elsewhere) about Rick Santorum, the good news is that the word “spreading” is not in the Top 200. Unfortunately for him, “sex” is #119. Most people talking about the definition are referring to it as a “sex act,” so clearly he has yet to escape the fact that it’s still being talked about.

Gay Marriage a Big Deal

It’s no secret that Santorum is against gay marriage, and the saturation of that message on the web is evident in the results from the Spiral16 platform (which measures not just social media, but news sites, blogs, video sites, and everything else).

The term “gay” is ranked #30 and “marriage” #42 out of the most common words used in association with Rick Santorum. “Definition,” a word used when he talks about the “definition of gay marriage,” is #181.

Social Issues Are Important to Santorum

In the word cloud for Santorum based on posts from all over the Internet, “abortion” is #71, “health” is #180, and “values” is 184. This is interesting because the term “pro-life” is not in the top 200. That’s not the language people are using when talking about his stance on this particular social issue.

Also, the results here highlight the fact that you always want to do a deeper dive and look at the context that these words are being used in. Not all of the posts containing “abortion” refer to his political position. Some recent posts are about an alleged relationship his wife had with an abortion doctor in the 1970s, so that may have affected its ranking. Regardless, it’s a hot-button issue that’s closely tied to his campaign.

“Iran” is #116

Another key issue that’s being driven home by Santorum and his campaign is his willingness to attack Iran if the country doesn’t cooperate with U.S. on its nuclear program. It’s also being hotly debated, which is why the word ranks so high (#116) in this web study.

Sweater Vests are Huge This Time of Year

Santorum got a lot of press following the Iowa caucuses for his preferred mode of dress throughout his appearances in all 99 of the state’s counties. “Sweater” is #88 in the word cloud, while “vest” is 179. On his site, he is selling the “official Rick Santorum For President sweater vest” for a $100 donation, which his campaign is saying has already netted him $100,000 so far. Check this out:

The Trouble With My Uncle 

“Nephew” was ranked 148 out of the most-used words in the Santorum study, which struck me as odd, so I did a little digging. Apparently, Rick Santorum’s 19-year-old college-student nephew wrote a column that endorsed Ron Paul and called his uncle “another big-government politician who supports the status quo to run our country.”   

Rick Perry Might Be Happy to Know That …

the word “crazy” is #189 out of the most-used words associated with Rick Santorum on the Internet.

Anybody who follows the NBA with any degree of interest can probably agree that the events surrounding the Chris Paul trade resulted in a huge amount of negative publicity for the league. Spiral16 has web data that helps illustrate just how far this story went beyond the sports blogs and infiltrated the mainstream press.

In case you haven’t heard the particulars of the controversy, NBA commissioner David Stern blocked New Orleans Hornets’ Chris Paul from being traded to the Los Angeles Lakers in a three-way trade that included the Houston Rockets, citing “basketball reasons.” This happened after Stern had given Hornets GM Dell Demps authority to make whatever moves he felt were in the team’s best interest. After his block, the trade was resubmitted, but the Lakers backed out. Days later, Paul was traded to the Los Angeles Clippers in a deal approved by the NBA.

Sentiment surrounding the Chris Paul trade was overwhelmingly negative.

Spiral16 monitored posts from across the web that contained keywords relating to the Chris Paul trade, specifically singling out posts that also contained a match for David Stern.

Not surprisingly, the negative sentiment was overwhelming.

When extracting pieces of content in close proximity to the keywords, 80% of the posts from December 8 forward (the date of the first proposed trade) contained overtly negative sentiment. Notable volume spikes happened the day after on December 9 and December 15 (the day after the new trade was accepted, sending Paul to the Clippers).

It’s no surprise that sports blogs represented the major share of online activity for news about the Chris Paul trade but what is unusual is that the Chris Paul trade and the NBA’s handling of the situation have become hot pop culture news as well.

The stories about Stern’s handling of the situation have made their way into pop culture with a popular Funny or Die list (10 Things David Stern Should Cancel) and sites like The Huffington Post buzzing with commentary on the Chris Paul trade with scathing results for David Stern and the NBA.

Blogs made up 55% of all web mentions about the controversial Chris Paul NBA trade.

The story has blanketed the blogosphere, making up 55% of all web mentions surrounding the trade. Twitter itself is also a hotspot for Chris Paul trade discussion, with 15% of the total relevant volume.

Video websites make up 13%, with a good mix of professionally made news-report video and webcam opinions on YouTube.

With data like this in their possession, the NBA would be able to pinpoint the places on the Internet where negative sentiment is the most rampant and influential. It’s the first step towards image rehabilitation, and being armed with relevant data from all over the web, the NBA would be able to benchmark current statistics and, after rolling out a multi-platform PR blitz or social campaign show improvement over time.

The story of Emma Sullivan and her tweet is a case study in the power of social media — and shows how many “professionals” get it so wrong by not using common sense and context when reacting to social media communication. This incident, as we mentioned yesterday, is proof that monitoring isn’t enough. You have to know what to do with the information once you get it!

Online reaction surrounding the Emma Sullivan-Gov. Sam Brownback situation was massive–an article in The Atlantic reflects the tone of the majority of the press coverage:

But in the holy commonwealth of Kansas, no sparrow shall fall without the notice of state-paid social-media watchdogs. Brownback’s staff sniffed out this verbal terrorism, and called her principal, who cravenly called her in and tried to bully her into writing an apology. Emma refused, and her story swept the Web like a fire off the Kansas prairie. Official humorlessness and hypocrisy had transformed an American teenager (an earlier tweet: “Dear edward and jacob, this is the best night of my life. I want u. Love, ur future wife #breakingdawn”) into a global symbol of protest.

Sam Brownback’s poor choice in handling this situation are crystal clear according to our data. We used the Spiral16 web monitoring platform to look back for two weeks, using only the term “Brownback” as a keyword and found that Emma Sullivan has completely hijacked Brownback’s web presence. That’s not really surprising, but here’s the data:

1. It only took one day for the story to overtake all other mentions of Brownback. Steam was building on Wed. Nov. 23, as other news articles about Brownback were still the most influential, but on Thanksgiving Day, news of Emma Sullivan’s scolding flooded the Internet, spurred on by sites like Reddit, Facebook, and Twitter. By Thursday, all of the most influential Brownback posts in the study were about Emma Sullivan.

Brownback web sentiment 11/15 - 11/22

2. Negative sentiment regarding Brownback was 25% before the story broke, and 45% negative afterwards. You might expect a higher negative percentage, but remember we are looking at the entire web, not just social media. Most news posts will come in as neutral since they are supposed to be objective.

Brownback web sentiment 11/23 - 11/29

3. The word “school” (as in “high school student”) is the second most-used word in all of the web posts (blogs, news, social media, video, etc.) that contain the word “Brownback.” When people don’t know Emma’s name, they are referring to her as the high-school student that took on a Governor.

4. Further proof? “Sullivan” is the fourth most used word, and “Emma” the tenth. Remember, we weren’t even looking for her name as a keyword and its still showing up that high. Also notable: This became a free-speech battle between the Governor’s office and a tweet. Check out the list of the most-used words, starting with the most-used:

brownback
school
kansas
sullivan
tweet
office
response
said
governor
emma
sam
high
media
message
new
social
students
apology
government
just
state
people
right
speech

5. Check out the reaction to his apology on the Governor Sam Brownback Facebook page. Yikes. And the #HeBlowsALot hashtag, used by Emma’s supporters. On the other hand, Emma Sullivan says she is being cyberbullied. Ugh.

Online monitoring is becoming an integral component of medical and healthcare marketing. More healthcare companies are using online monitoring for their business because more consumers are using online health information as a de facto second opinion, as well as a means by which to explore alternative treatments.

There is no big mystery as to why the internet has become an invaluable resource to people looking for health-related information. We often feel helpless as it relates to our own care and well-being, and searching online allows people to feel more in control of their heath and situation.

And while social networks play an important part in health seekers online life, the vast majority begin their searches for information and communities via a traditional search engine like Google, not via social networks. This means any listening strategy needs to built around solutions that provide context beyond just social platforms to help you understand how health facilities, providers, or communities appear online.

Spiral16 has been helping health brands, facilities, and service providers understand their presence online for over 4 years. This week Spiral16′s Tracy Panko and Aaron Weber spoke to a group at the American Marketing Association about online monitoring for healthcare companies, and how listening can inform strategy as well as more efficiently directing resources to their audience. The research in the presentations shows why online monitoring is extremely valuable for companies in the healthcare sector as well as the statistics behind the growing consumer demand.

A recent study from the Pew Internet and American Life Project called these information seeking consumers “Health Seekers”. More than half of the “Health Seekers” searching online for medical information were searching for someone else. Over 72% of Health Seekers were looking for info about a specific illness or condition. This makes perfect sense as the children of the Baby Boomers grow older.

The reasons that people use the Internet as a healthcare resource

For healthcare companies, understanding what information your customers may find about you is as important as what your potential customers are saying about you. Monitoring helps focus your business priorities–saving valuable time and resources.

Fill out the contact form below to read Spiral16′s AMA Presentation on Healthcare or contact one of the members of the Spiral16 team for more information.

The Share.Like.Buy. conference is Thursday and Friday September 22-23, 2011 in San Francisco, and Spiral16 is excited to join Facebook, MTV, Forrester, Sony Music, and Forbes as speakers. The entire conference revolves around a large-scale study of millennials, a trillion-dollar demographic, and their habits.

Barkley, in partnership with The Boston Consulting Group and Service Management Group, conducted the research study American Millennials: Deciphering the Enigma Generation, based on a deep survey of 4,000 millennials and 1,000 of their parents. Spiral16 CEO Tracy Panko will appear on the panel “Tapping Millenial Passion” at 9:10am on Friday, September 23.

In addition to listening to some great speakers and interacting with the top marketers and technologists around, those who register for the conference will also receive a copy of Spiral16′s newest case study, Livestrong: Reaching Millenials By Building Engaged Communities.

Millenials (or Generation Y, as some have referred to it) have grown up with computers a part of everyday life and are all about authentic engagement. This is something that Livestrong has built their entire marketing plan around.

Why is Livestrong So Successful Using Social Media?

According to the study American Millennials: Deciphering the Enigma Generation, Livestrong is the number-four most recognized nonprofit cause for millennials.

Using our targeted data correlation and web analytics platform, Spiral16 collected 18 months of web data not about Livestrong in general, but instead about three core spokes of their organization: The Team Livestrong arm of the charity and two specific events—the signature fundraising event Livestrong Challenge Series and the Ride for the Roses Weekend, designed as a thank you to the charity’s most dedicated fundraisers.

Top 10 Most Influential Web Pages - Click for a larger view.

Spiral16 collected and analyzed relevant Livestrong web results and found that the nonprofit’s online presence makes a compelling case study on how to successfully engage millennials. Livestrong has a very positive and engaged community.

Despite dramatic and controversial events surrounding Livestrong founder Lance Armstrong, the Spiral16 data shows that Livestrong has continued to successfully engage their community and turn them into passionate evangelists.

Besides amassing a huge following on Twitter, Livestrong has also spread its influence and message across other social media platforms with a clear and concise message. Eight out of the Top 10 most influential web pages in the study are components of the Livestrong organization, while the remaining two pages were created by passionate Livestrong fans. (The RSS feed for the Livestrong blog ranked even higher — number two — than blog URL itself.)

This kind of presence is impressive. As much as brands would like to, they cannot just control online attitudes at will. A digital presence this dominating, nonprofit or not, can only be built up from years of consistent hard work and clear strategizing.

What Can You Learn From This?

It just goes to show that social media is not a sprint, it’s a marathon. Start listening now. The patient companies will reap the benefits of targeted web data and authentic engagement and use these things to forge a new communications path forward.

Kind of exciting, isn’t it?

Back in January, filmmaker/Twitter troublemaker Kevin Smith (@ThatKevinSmith) announced at the Sundance Film Festival that he was bucking the Hollywood system.

Screw the millions of dollars normally spent on movie marketing. Smith has always had a loyal niche audience. After the premiere screening of his new film, he proclaimed that he would be skipping all normal modes of theatrical distribution and would take his new movie “Red State” on the road himself in March and promote it primarily through the web and social media. This “road show,” which contained live Q&As and/or podcast tapings after the movie, would all lead up to an October 19 theatrical release date, Smith said.

Things have changed since then (the movie is available on VOD starting tomorrow), and Spiral16 has been monitoring the online presence of Smith and “Red State” using our web monitoring platform to see where the hotspots of activity have been online and how they have correlated with Smith’s savvy handling of media, without spending a dime on newspaper or web ads (until last week when AMPAS forced him to buy ads so its actors could be considered for the Oscars).

The biggest takeaway from this study is simply this:

Smith has slowly and methodically developed a huge network of supporters through his masterful manipulation of the press and a simple but “all-blanketing” online strategy: More is better. More content, more tweets, more outrageous.

@ThatKevinSmith is huge (double meaning intended)

First, let’s state the obvious: Kevin Smith is all about Twitter. The man has over 1.8 million followers and tweets umpteen times a day — even more if he feels a rant coming on (a phenomenon he calls Twitterrhea). The number-one place for “Red State”-related chatter, by far, has been Twitter. Consider this proof: For this study, we limited relevant online mentions to posts containing “kevin smith” (yes, first and last name) AND “red state.” That way we ruled out anyone mentioning “red state” the popular term and anyone not talking about Kevin in that same phrase. It rules out “red state” mentions that contain “smith” only, but that could also let in plenty of irrelevant results, so we kept it simple, but effective, for determining the correct context.

It does limit Twitter a bit, however, because in 140 characters or less, all 20 characters had to show up exactly the way we’re looking for them. Tweets from @ThatKevinSmith will not be included for instance, unless they mention “Kevin Smith” and “Red State” — and I don’t think he talks about himself in the third person as often as Bob Dole.

That said, even with this limiting factor, Twitter outweighed all other websites by far, comprising more than 28% of all relevant URLs in the study.

Huge.

Blogs and News sites make up 60% of "Red State" Kevin Smith-related chatter.

As evidenced by his Sundance publicity stunt where he said he would put “Red State” up for auction to the studios — and then sold it to himself for $20 — Smith knows how to get free publicity. He doesn’t need his Twitter account for this, so it’s interesting how much his promotion strategy relies on mainstream news and movie blogs to write about “Red State.” A whopping 60% of all results returned for this study came from blogs and news sites, which are all too eager to produce content about controversial issues/people.

1. 42% of all relevant online posts since March were blogs.
2. 18% of all relevant online posts since March were traditional news sites.

Volume Spikes Driven By Smith-Controlled Announcements

During the American road show this spring, there was a respectable amount of blogs, news postings, and fan reviews of the film. But the real volume spikes came from big announcements about the movie’s distribution and future touring.

Some recent volume spikes don’t even have anything to do with “Red State,” yet the movie title was mentioned in these posts too, proving that as long as Smith creates headlines, “Red State” is getting press as well. During 2011, the two are tied together implicitly. So even as Smith was “putting asses in the seats,” there are a far greater number of journalists and bloggers eager to tweet news of his success/failure. Here are the dates/headlines for some of the more notable volume spikes:

Savvy handling of the mainstream press resulted in volume spikes and more content sharable by Smith's massive online following. CLICK TO ENLARGE.

• 5/17 – Phase 4 Films Acquires Canadian Rights to the movie, announcement of the Canadian ‘Red Province Tour’
• 6/28-29 – Smith announces that Lionsgate has picked up digital and TV rights for the movie, which means it will become available on VOD
• 7/27-29 – News that Smith is hosting a new TV talk-show pilot, and a new red-band trailer for the movie hits the web
• 8/2 – DVD details released
• 8/15-16 – Smith reveals that his followup (and last film) “Hit Somebody,” will be two parts.
• 8/26 – Smith tells CNN he’s eternally grateful to golf star Tiger Woods for deflecting media attention away from him when he was “too fat to fly.”

Read that last one and tell me this not a master of publicity at work.

For Part Two tomorrow, we’ll examine Kevin’s content strategy and online influencers. We’ll find out which bloggers and news sites publish the most “Red State”-related content and get a view of sentiment surrounding the film.