An awards campaign runs for months and costs a great deal, which seems odd for a contest supposedly decided on merit. The spending is aimed at a scarce resource: the attention of voters who cannot watch everything.
Voters face more contenders than time
Voting bodies are made up of working professionals who receive far more eligible titles than any person can watch during a busy season. Attention, not persuasion, is the binding constraint.
A campaign's first job is therefore to ensure a film is actually seen, through screenings, screener access and reminders timed to when voters are likely to watch.
A film nobody watches cannot be voted for, regardless of quality, which is why distribution to voters precedes any argument about the work itself.
The calendar is fixed and crowded
Eligibility windows, nomination voting and final voting fall at set points, and the weeks around them are contested by every contender at once.
Starting early spreads that competition out. A film that has been present in conversation since the fall enters the crowded stretch already familiar to voters.
Late arrivals have to buy attention at the moment it is most expensive and most divided, which is why release dates are chosen with the calendar in mind.
Festivals function as the opening move
Premiering at a major festival generates the first critical reaction, and that reaction becomes the frame through which a film is discussed for months afterward.
A strong festival response gives a distributor something to build on, and a weak one often prompts a quieter release strategy instead of a campaign.
The festival is therefore a test as much as a launch, which is why acquisitions and campaign budgets are frequently decided in the days after a screening.
Categories are chosen strategically
Whether a performance is submitted as lead or supporting is a campaign decision, made against how crowded each category appears and where the film's chances are strongest.
The same logic governs which of several strong performances a studio actively supports, since campaigning for two in one category splits the constituency.
These choices are made months before voting, based on incomplete information about what competitors will do. A miscalculation can place two strong contenders in the same narrow race.
The prize is commercial as well as symbolic
Nominations extend a film's theatrical life, raise its value in later licensing windows and give it a permanent line in every future description of it.
They also raise the fees and access of everyone attached, which is why representatives campaign for their clients independently of the studio.
The scale of the spending only makes sense because the return persists for years rather than for one evening. A nomination attaches itself permanently to a title in a way advertising cannot.