And it wasn't even raining!

Remember last year at the Oscars? “No, it wasn’t a marketing stunt”, said Samsung, who may have paid a reported £12m for its advertising “integration” but the company, it insisted, was every bit as astonished as everyone else when host Ellen De Generes’s star-studded selfie, taken during the broadcast on a Samsung smartphone, became the most retweeted message of all time.

It was forwarded on Twitter more than 2 million times by the time the ceremony was over, causing the social media site briefly to collapse and ensuring that coverage of the awards focused almost less on the winners than on the selfie. Worth every penny for Samsung then – stunt or no stunt!

Someone put it beautifully to me; “the BAFTAs are rather peripheral Oscar wannabes anyway” and this year underlined that, with the lacklustre ceremony (despite the attendance of some A-listers) and Stephen Fry’s rather tired Oscar Wilde routine.

It wasn’t even raining.

I blame the sponsors – they throw money in, but don’t give the awards a creative helping hand, so what’s the point? What real value was there for EE to have their logo pasted onto the victory lectern? Was there a real relationship between EE and the BAFTA brand or was that purpose sacrificed in a bid to secure the financial backing?

This was a missed opportunity to bring value and opportunity for EE and kickstart the glamour and importance of the BAFTA’s again.

We won’t mention the date clash with the GRAMMYs, nor the global media attention. That was unfortunate, but tells its own story.