But, as the internet is changing the game of Super Bowl advertising, what opportunities have arisen?  At $3 million per spot, it’s worthwhile to explore every opportunity!

In the past, Super Bowl commercials have been kept secret till game day.  This was to built up mystique, a fascination trigger.  But this year, brands have done something different.  Some are posting the commercials online well in advance of the game.  This has not been done before, and Volkswagen did it.  Conventional wisdom would say that this is a bad thing.  But the number says differently.  The online video has gathered 11 million views since it was posted on February 2. 

So, what forces are at work here (no pun intended)?  Well, another fascination trigger has been activated:  Vice.  Volkswagen went ahead and did something that they shouldn’t have done:  they revealed their Super Bowl commercial!  This gathered a lot of buzz and hype.  However, I suspect that this trend would not continue in future games to come.  If revealing the Super Bowl commercial ahead of the big game becomes the norm, it’d no longer be buzz-worthy. 

A more likely approach that would endure is the route many other brands have decided to go.  Posting teasers online.  This keeps up the mystique.  Builds up the hype.  Builds up the buzz.  And, it make you look forward to the commercial that much more.  From those that have been posted, I found the Snicker one particularly interesting, because it even tells you exactly which quarter the commercial is going to air. 

In the world of TiVo, a captive audience was already attractive.  A captive audience that actually is looking for your commercial, that’s almost priceless.  So, the question becomes, what will be the price of a 30-second ad spot next year?

Check out our week long discussion of Super Bowl here.
Email Subscribers: Volkswagen YouTube link , Snicker YouTube link

Related articles

• “Little Darth Vader Volkswagen Super Bowl Commercial For The Win” and related posts (kbgbabbles.blogspot.com)
• Super Bowl Commercials 2011 Preview (tvsquad.com)

The sporting event of the year is now the advertising event of the year.  It’s an exciting time for advertising, even for the general public, not just marketers.  In fact, 18% will look up Super Bowl commercials online or on smart phones on Super Bowl Sunday.  So, the internet is definitely playing a role in Super Bowl XLV.

So now, it’s time to turn the discussion from viewers to advertisers.  The most anticipated commercials will be those from Anheuser-Busch.  In a recent survey, 29% of the respondents is looking forward to Anheuser-Busch commercials.  This is because they have debuted crowd favorites year after year.  Such consistency builds trust.  Such consistency builds expectations.  Such consistency builds brands.

But even advertising giants have to adapt to the changing world of marketing.

This year, Bud Light has launched a Facebook effort ahead of the Super Bowl.  Tactics included Facebook ads, Facebook apps, and Facebook wall posts with video teaser.  It’s a well designed campaign centered around the highly anticipated commercials.  Fans are asked to comment on the plot of the commercials based on stills.  If the fans guess the plots correctly, Bud Light will release another commercial online.

I think this is a smart strategy to engage Bud Light fans, and build up top-of-mind awareness for Super Bowl Sunday.  After all, you need to stock up on beer for the game!

One of the obvious key performance indicator is how many new “Likes” Bud Light accumulates over the course of the campaign.  You have to “Like” Bud Light before you can participant in the game.  We see this in many Facebook campaigns.  Accumulating “Likes” holds obvious appeal to marketers.  We get to feed you content to your Facebook stream.  For a brand like Bud Light, engagement these final days ahead of game day could make a huge difference in sales (assuming people are not snowed in).  So, this is a good strategy for Bud Light.

However, it remains to be seen how advertisers are going to move beyond accumulating “Likes” and pushing contents.  How would we eventually move beyond the framework of push marketing?  Maybe one day, big advertisers will be ready to be social in social media.  It’s a real forum to dialogue with fans.  But for many of us, we are still quite a ways off from figuring out just exactly how do we want to do that…

Email Subscribers: Link to Screenshots of the Bud Light campaign

Related articles

• Bud Light Challenges Facebook Fans To Guess Its Super Bowl Ads (mashable.com)
• Featured Facebook Campaigns: Bud Light, Dentyne and New Belgium Brewing (e1evation.com)

As we continue our look into Super Bowl, we further discovers why it’s such a hot venue for advertisers.  Based on recent Nielsen report, TV rating for major sporting events over-index on high income households.  According to Nielsen, Super Bowl indexed at 128 / 100 for households earning more than $100,000 annually.  No wonder that even in this economic environment, a 30-second ad spot still cost upwards of $3 millions!

Last year, the Super Bowl attracted 106.5 million viewers, eclipsing the series finale of M*A*S*H as the most watched TV program in US history.  This year shows potential to have even higher ratings.  The Steelers and the Green Bay Packers, according to 2010 ratings, commands a high total rating scores.  They’ve had a good season, and the post season rating is sure to continue to soar.

Throughout the year, Nielsen observed a surge in ethnic viewership.  Hispanic households viewership jumped up 9% compared to a year ago, and African American households up 4% compared to prior year.  Such improvement in minority viewership is particularly attractive to advertisers who are trying to tap into this increasingly wealthy demographic.

Another attractive fact about the Super Bowl is the female viewership.  Nielsen reports that there is a higher percentage of female viewership in football than any other sports.  Many of the women watching this particularly game on Sunday will be watching it specifically for the commercials.  This fact is particularly helpful to brands that are targeted to male, but picked up at the store by females.  A particularly interesting campaign that target both guys and their ladies is Old Spice, but that’s another post (watch for it on Thursday).

Finally, let’s talk about the weather.  Nielsen marked an increase of 8% during the last winter storm that swept the nation.  There is another winter storm coming, and it’s slated to hit the east coast by this weekend.  This may push Super Bowl viewership even higher.

All in all, Super Bowl not only draws in a large crowd, but the right crowd.  No wonder it’s the advertising event of the year!

Photo Credit:  Jason Burrows

Related articles

• Who’s watching the Super Bowl? (curiousmarketeer.com)
• Will ‘Super Bowl’ TV Viewership Set Another Record? (Poll+ Ratings History) (tvbythenumbers.zap2it.com)

I have long been a fan of negative comments in the social sphere.  I think they are necessary evils.  This is because I don’t believe a brand can be all things to all people.

A brand stands above a commodity because it stands for something.  A Victoria Secret bra is not your Walmart bra because it’s specifically designed and made to make you feel sexy.  However, there is a downside to this.  To stand for something automatically means you are not going to stand for something else.  A Victoria Secret bra is not cheap.  A real brand cannot be everything to everyone. This is not a new concept in marketing, but it’s not a concept that’s always practiced.

Therefore, a clearly positioned brand is always going to have their core targets and their pagans, or nonbelievers. Depending on what you’re selling and how emotional that category is, your pagans can be very loud in the social space. So, as a matter of facts, having pagans tells you you’ve done something right. You’ve taken a stand and clearly defined a space for yourself.

The trick is to take those negative comments from your pagans, and address it in a way that talks to your core believers!

Yes, I am expensive. That’s because we spend millions in research to bring you the best quality product your money can buy. We will not sacrifice quality, ever.

I further elaborated on this topic on Ari Herzog’s Featured Friday series. Check it out!

• Facebook To Launch Social Group-Buying Feature
• Facebook Zeroes In On Mobile Advertising, Buys Seattle Startup Rel8tion
• US Twitter Users Spending More Time Than Ever On Twitter.com, Report Says

But one headline in particular jumped out:  LinkedIn Pushes Ad Tools appeared in today’s Wall Street Journal.

LinkedIN is a professional social network.  For me, it has essentially replaced my rolodex.  Contacts I make in business, I invite them in my network on LinkedIn.  With special interests groups on LinkedIN, it’s also a great way to connect with others in the industry.  From a personal branding perspective, a LinkedIN profile is a must have, so the world (or future employers) can appreciate your professional journey, experience, and network.  With the professional bend, LinkedIN users tend to be older than your typical social network crowd.  They also tend to be more established in their industries.  They are also likely very career driven, and some have found career successes.  All in all, this can be a very attractive group to advertisers.

Following other social networks’ footsteps, LinkedIN is going to further develop its advertising offering.  The latest include more specific targeting.  Now, advertisers can target company, levels, company size, etc.  The latest also appears to be incorporating some social context.  Of course, if Facebook serves as any type of example, it would suggest that it’d be only a matter of time before more interactive and more intrusive ads will begin to appear on LinkedIN.

The advantage for LinkedIN is that it’s a professional network.  As oppose to Facebook where users are looking to relax and connect with friends, LinkedIN users are actively seeking out other professional for business advice or actual services.  Therefore, they are more likely to be more open to advertisements.

However, that doesn’t mean everyone should start advertising on LinkedIN.  Business Insider has reported in the past how ineffectively LinkedIN advertising has been traditionally.  It has been reported that LinkedIN ads cost upward of $30 per click.  That’s quite a price premium over a $1 per click cost on paid search.  As illustrated by the lack of response to the many discussions on LinkedIN that have been started by “consultants” who are trying to push their services onto the community with little disguise, relevance is still vital.  Ads still need to be targeted.

The Wall Street Journal article cited a failed ad campaign by an art gallery.  The gallery owner probably correctly identified the demographic target for her ad campaign.  Successful business professionals with high discretionary budgets are probably going to be art patrons.  However, perhaps she didn’t correctly identify the engagement vehicle.  When professionals are browsing on LinkedIN, they have their business hat on.  They’re not necessarily thinking about redecorating their homes.

Wall Street Journal reports that American Express and Hewlett-Packard have both signed on as advertisers for the latest ad tools.  Both of these advertisers would likely enjoy a good ROI on the LinkedIN campaign as they are business-focused.  American Express has been a long time supporter of small business owners with OPEN.  It’d be interesting to see how advertising on LinkedIN will continue to evolve and what type of advertisers will succeed on LinkedIN.

Photo credit: via Wall Street Journal

Related articles

• LinkedIn Now Allows Advertisers to Target Users by Job Title & More (mashable.com)
• LinkedIn Tries To Juice Up Its Ad Efforts (businessinsider.com)
• LinkedIn Adds Granular Ad Targeting (clickz.com)
• LinkedIn Pushes Ad Tools (voices.allthingsd.com)
• LinkedIn Pushes Ad Targeting (online.wsj.com)

Dabbling into social media has always been scary for big brands.  Because we lose control of it all.  Because we allow the voice of a few to be heard, and we can’t just use TV advertising to drown them out.  It’s like you have handed over a microphone to everyone, including your haters, and to let them broadcast to the world whatever they want.  However, it is still generally advocated that big brand should participate in the social media discussion, good or bad.  Why?  Well, the discussion is happening anyway, so you may as well be a part of it.  It’s the only way you can learn and improve.  If someone at your office is circulating rumors about you, wouldn’t you like to know what exactly is being circulated?

Sue is always eating at meeting.  What’s worse, she leaves all her napkins and breadcrumbs and stuffs behind in meeting rooms.  I hate going into a conference room afterwards.  She’s such a mess.

There’s no reason to go talk to John.  Just go talk to his boss.  I sent him three emails this week, and he didn’t reply to a single one.

Well, turns out John’s grandma passed, and yes, that’s making him a little less responsive.  If you were John, you’d want to set the record straight.

Turns out Sue really is a mess.  If you were Sue, and you didn’t bother to pay attention to these stories, you may never realize what you were doing is unappealing to people.

So, yes, it’s important to participate in the social space.  It’s just part of good customer service – paying attention to your customers.

However, allowing negative comments to happen organically is one thing.  I wouldn’t want to pay for negative comments to be broadcasted.  Am I really that old-school?

The latest in Facebook’s ad offering is “Sponsored Stories”.  This means when a Facebook user interacts with your brand via, Likes, Check-ins or page posts, it gets broadcasted to a much wider Facebook community like an ad would on the sidebar.  For example, if a user check-in to your venue, you can paid to have that broadcasted.  Now, that’s no so bad when the check in is positive.  For example, Megan may check-in at bar X (bar X being the advertiser) and with the comment of “having a great time at happy hour with friend Jane.”  Now, all (if the advertiser pays for it all) of Megan’s friends will see on the sidebar that Megan has checked in to venue x and is “having a great time…”  This is very on-strategy with a recent Nielsen study that found ads to have social context to be more successful.  In this case, Megan is serving to be an endorser of bar x to her friends, without her realizing it.

It wouldn’t be horrible either if the check in turned out to be Jason checking in Starbucks with a comment “still waiting for my date to show up… hope she’s not a no show”.

But what if someone check in to restaurant Z with a comment “just got served raw chicken…”  That isn’t so good.

Or someone may just post a negative post on your fan page and says “your place sucks!”  And that became the copy that shows up as a “Sponsored Stories”.

Now advertisers do have some control.  Advertisers could limit this to just “Likes”.  “Likes” are by definition positive.  Generally speaking, I don’t have any problems with the existence of the negatives either.  I’m believe in negative comments.  Because in general, every brand stands for something, which automatically means they are not going to stand for something else.  Every brand is supposed to have their pagans.  These are people who doesn’t believe what your brand is selling.  These are the people who never got it.  These are the exactly the opposite of your core consumers.  For example, these are the tree huggers and you are a fur coat maker.  (I’m using this as an example and using labels to simplify the example.  I am not making a political statement here.)  But that’s okay.  These two can co-exist.  Fur coat makers are not trying to sell fur coats to tree huggers.  Tree huggers are not their demographic.  Fur coat buyers also know that they are not tree huggers, and they’re okay with that.  They are okay with tree huggers saying fur coats are bad, and they’ve reconciled themselves with that opinion.

Negative comments are there.  They exist regardless of whether social media is around.  PETA existed long before Facebook and Twitter.

Facebook promotes this new tactics as being more effective to buy word of mouth.

However, as open minded I’m about negative comments, I’m not sure about this.  For some brands, this may not be a concerned at all.  For others that have put a hard line in the sand on what they are selling and what they’re not, this is not just embracing the existing of negative comment.  This is paying to have them broadcasted.  Am I too old-school to think that’s not necessarily a good advertising model?

Photo Credit: Microphone by Daehyun Park.  Facebook image via AdAge.com

Related articles

• Facebook Turns Friend Activity Into New Ad Format (mashable.com)
• Facebook Turns the ‘Like’ Into Its Newest Ad (AdAge.com)
• Facebook Adds ‘Sponsored Stories’ to Ad Arsenal (AdWeek.com)

Awesome + Awesome = Awesomer does not work! That kind of silly execution may be aligned with Emerald Nuts’ brand equity, but it does nothing for Pop Secret. Though, being the bad ad does generate some publicity (hence people like me talking about it). Also, it is “ground breaking” in the fact that it tries to communicate way more than what a commercial is supposed to do (i.e. to promote two brands). But, in the end, in my opinion, it doesn’t work.

So, I ask again, why are ad agencies still in business? Because ad agencies have really good salespeople, who know how to make us corporate folks feel good about how we’re spending our money.

If I was to be the judge and the jury, the consumer generated CareerBuilder ad titled “Worst Seat” would win best ad this year.

Too often, people remember funny commercial, but forget the brand. I believe this ad successfully achieved both.

Consider the audience of the game, this kind of fart joke humor appeals to the demographics. Yet, everyone could easily identify with this commercial. It may not be farting, but we all know how it feels to sit between two idiots.

However, the humor did not distract from the main message that it’s time to move on. Find a new job, and Careerbuilder can help.

This ad is the summation of a larger campaign where consumers generated the content, and voted on the content. It is this kind of comprehensive campaigns that makes a $3 million ad spot worthwhile. Considering the economy and the job market right now, it’s surprising that Careerbuilder’s main competitors have not been more aggressive with ad spend during this game.

Google’s “Parisian Love” did win hearts everywhere, while showing off everything Google. So maybe there is some value in having good ad agencies still.

Related articles online

• This year’s Super Bowl ads go goofy and frugal (seattletimes.nwsource.com)

The other night, I came across a commercial for a local flower shop. With Valentine’s Day just two weeks away, it was the perfect time for a local flower shop to raise its top of mind awareness.

The commercial went something like this:

Valentine’s Day is on February 14th, and there is no better way to give something special to your sweetheart than to give a beautiful arrangement from our shop. In fact, you could make her whole week special by having the flowers delivered to her work earlier in the week. Remember, Valentine’s Day is on February 14th. Order your arrangement from us today.

Now, that was a horrible commercial for a local flower shop.

Why?

Because this ad did a lot more for the category than it did for the flower shop itself. This would have been a great ad for a shop that has dominant share of the market. In which case, as long as more people order flowers, the dominate player would be bound to get more business.

However, a local flower shop is rarely the dominate player, or even a big player. In which case, the goal of any marketing effort should not be growing the entire category, but to grow your own share within the category.

How could you do that?

By focusing on why consumers should pick you over all the other alternatives. What would make you better than the flower shop at the grocery store? What would make you better than an internet flower shop?

Would it be the personal attention? Would it be a timed delivery guarantee? Would it be the experience of the florist? Would it be the availability of unique flowers?

Reminding people that Valentine’s Day is around the corner was a great message. Giving people the idea to have arrangements delivered early was a great idea. However, even the best idea or the best message would be useless if the objectively of the commercial, or any marketing effort for that matter, was ill-defined.

Photo credit: FotoDawg

I hope everyone had a wonderful Thanksgiving break. For me, it was over all too fast.

While I was home, I had an interesting conversation with my mother. It was a very enlightening conversation – about marketing clutter, confusing marketing messages, etc.

Verizon launched an aggressive campaign against AT&T over 3G coverage. This solicited an equally aggressive response from AT&T. In fact, AT&T has been fighting it in the courtroom. It has been fighting it on the air. And it all just became clutter for the average consumer, like my mother.

The head-to-head comparisons were confusing. My mother actually said that she no longer know who to believe. Verizon says it’s the best. AT&T says it’s the best. So, which is the best?

We both paid better attention to the commercials the next time they aired. We realized that the comparisons were not exactly the same. That’s where the problem is with checklist comparisons.

Product A can pick attribute 1, 2, and 3. Then, they would say they’re the best, at least in these three attributes.

Product B would then pick attribute 4, 5, and 6. They would say they’re the best, according to these three different attributes.

Which is really the best? Who knows? Surely, the consumers wouldn’t.

A couple without cellphones is more connected than a couple *with* cellphones, originally uploaded by Ed Yourdon.

The holiday season has definitely begun. Not being a religious person and not having any kids to buy toys for, this is a particularly annoying season.

However, this is also the season of some of the best ads. I’m sure I’ll be discussing a few over the next few weeks.

Today, I’d like to talk about the Wal-Mart ads: “Christmas Costs Less at Wal-Mart.”

I think these ads are great. Why? Because they reinforce Wal-Mart’s brand promise – costing less.

What I also really liked was that Wal-Mart knows who it’s talking to, and how to talk to them.

Wal-Mart is definitely not talking to me. But that’s okay, because I’m not Wal-Mart’s target consumer.

If Wal-Mart was talking to me, Wal-Mart would have been worried about being politically correct. But, these ads do not care about being politically correct. Wal-Mart’s target consumers are probably already fed up of being politically correct. They WANT to enjoy “Christmas”. They don’t want to call it “Holidays”. Wal-Mart wants to speak the same language as its core consumers.

But, doesn’t Wal-Mart worry about annoying the crowd?

No. It doesn’t.

Why not?

Because that’s what marketing is all about. Remember my series on Primal Branding? One of the major lessons in that was to know you’re talking to and to know what you stand for. You are not going to please everyone. But, you will connect with those you care most. And at the end of the day, that’s what matters!

Photo Credit: I’m sure my grandma had these, originally uploaded by Jo Naylor ~the book is out!!~.

Related articles online

• Wal-Mart’s holiday toy program: 100 toys for $10 (ceoworld.biz)
• Wal-Mart Sees Late Christmas, Won’t Put Decorations Up Before October (shoppingblog.com)