I'd Like to Thank Me...

Best Supporting Actress Melissa Leo became a part of Oscar history when she became the first winner to drop the F-bomb during the acceptance speech for her role as Alice Ward in The Fighter.

But the actress showed—and flexed—her entrepreneurial muscle well before the Academy Awards in a move that critics reviled but underdogs cheered. Not happy with Relativity and Paramount’s marketing efforts to land her the coveted golden man, the 50-year-old actress decided to take matters into her own hands and pay for ads in the industry’s trade publications urging Academy voters to simply “Consider” her.

“I took matters into my own hands. I knew what I was doing, and told my representation how earnest I was about this idea. I had never heard of any actor taking out an ad as themselves, and I wanted to give it a shot," Leo told Deadline’s Pete Hammond.

Despite Leo’s claim that no other actor has done what she has, Hammond cited several examples in his exploration of the dilemma actors face when it comes to outright campaigning:

Oscar consultants have long thought that personal campaigns can send the wrong message or come off as overkill. Some front-runners have proven you don’t even have to campaign at all to win. Last year, some bloggers criticized Mo’Nique for staying in Atlanta to do her new talk show and refusing to “play the Oscar game.” Yet she won handily that year, just by letting her performance speak for itself.

On the other hand, Candy Clark paid for a steady series of quarter-page ads for her role in 1973’s American Graffiti. As the only cast member to launch a campaign, it paid off with a Best Supporting Actress nomination for the then-little known actress. Similarly, in 1987 Sally Kirkland paid for a series of ads cramming critics' quotes into an Oscar ad campaign for her small indie, Anna—and that resulted in a Golden Globe win and an Academy Award nomination for Best Actress, a real feat considering the film's low profile and the lack of budget to promote it.

Shortly after Leo’s conversation with Deadline, she changed her story, saying: “I've been busting my ass trying to get the movie sold and seen, and now I show up where they ask, get put into hair and makeup that they pay for, so I can promote this thing [and campaign]. So I'm a little confused. I thought this is what we're doing. This is what all the girls are doing."

Still, perhaps Leo, who was first nominated for an Oscar two years ago for her lead role in art-house flick Frozen River, felt motivated to boost the campaign due to her previous loss. Many an entrepreneur believes that a key trait of successful people is being able to analyze a mistake, learn from it, and do better next time.

In what was arguably the Oscar’s first full plunge into the social-media realm, however, Leo didn’t take full advantage of the platform’s viral element and its ability to make “someone” out of even everyday people. Even cohost James Franco, who just signed up for a Twitter handle last week, has embraced the medium, tweeting furiously all week and treating followers to behind-the-scenes goodies throughout the broadcast. Leo's Twitter page seems to either be run by a PR agent or someone even more remote, has no authentic-sounding tweets, and discusses the actress in the third-person.

What may have worked better, in retrospect in terms of Lee’s brand equity, was to have partnered with influencers—bloggers and twitterati—who are fast-becoming the go-to second-tier advertising campaigns for many retailers. Rather than tweeting, Facebooking, or blogging about their own products, brands are opting to harness the power of the young and chatty by sending them pitches and product and letting the work speak for itself.

In Leo’s case, a few well-placed blog posts could have had more of an impact on the Academy without creating the negative backlash that the actress endured. Still, a win is a win, and industry experts won’t be surprised if the cutthroat world that is the Oscar vote lobby doesn’t ramp up exponentially by next year as studios and stars take to their social-media platforms to launch multichannel campaigns.

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Romy Ribitzky is an associate editor at Portfolio.com.