Do these campaigns actually work? After all, they represent an insane per capita expenditure designed to do nothing more than influence a tiny pool of undecided film-industry voters in a contest that often has only a negligible effect on the box office and a transient one on winners’ reputations. So why bother? Because winning is the only thing in Hollywood other than money that reassures the studios (though almost never the winners themselves) that they did something better than everyone else. Read more: Inside the Singular Hysteria of the Brutal Academy Awards Race -- New York Magazine http://nymag.com/movies/features/63661/index1.html#ixzz0fMJGjJ94