Page 1: Introduction
Page 2: Brands to Watch... or Not
Page 3: User-Generated Content
Page 4: Mobile
Page 5: Online Video
Page 6: TV Drives to the Web
Page 7: The Buzz on Buzz
In a recent industry publication poll, 40 percent of respondents felt that the best way to get your money's worth from a Super Bowl ad is to not do one. That's what the industry people think!
It's notable that while the cost of the spots are always a topic of debate, most brands do little to leverage the interest and traffic SB spots can generate. In fact, it's difficult to get a pre-game clip of the spots.
So the situation is, the advertisers are paying astronomical sums to be part of the hype, and then refusing much of the hype that could be generated.
Taking a sneak peak at the Doritos user-generated ads I was impressed with the production quality. A couple of the finalists would have been difficult to peg as amateur. Like the game itself, Super Bowl ads are nothing if they're not hype. And that's primarily been the online mediums' role around Super Bowl ads. Help extend the hype (unless that hype is of the pre-game variety, apparently).
It strikes me as odd that so much of the hype the spots generate is focused on the spots themselves. Rarely does the buzz flow into anything central to the company's business model. Perhaps the companies most qualified to make that transition, dotcoms, are still standing on the sidelines.
Some dotcoms have logical business models for a buy known to drive heavy buzz and stir viral activity. That kind of jump start could really spike a community or social network activity. However, most dotcom brand managers don't have the budget for Super Bowl advertising, or likely have past experience with the challenges of transitioning mass media-driven visitors into numbers more meaningful than unique visit stats.
Doug Schumacher
President & Creative Director
Basement, Inc.
$2.6 MM is a lot of moolah but viewership will exceed expectation as everyone tunes in to see if Peyton can finally win the big one.
Budweiser ads will score highest in post-game surveys.
The net will finally and definitively arrive as everyone will link the broadcast spot to some form of online promotion.
GoDaddy will get past CBS's network standards folks, and their spot will air.
Peyton Manning would be going to Disney World, if only Disney would let him…
Curt Viebranz
CEO
TACODA
There'll be a lot of laughs-- but few winners. I'm betting no more than three. The other 95 percent will fade into the $148 Million Dollar Wasteland ($2.6 million times the 57 ads that don't create a buzz).
With the premium you pay to have your ad in this game, it's now America's biggest crapshoot. Will yours be one of the few that gets buzz, or will it be one of the rest -- all made by people as talented as you -- that doesn't take?
Everyone wants to make the next "1984," but face it: that ad aired a generation ago, and its success has never been repeated. Even Apple itself couldn't do it. Remember the 1985 "Lemmings" ad (or the Macintosh Office product it touted)?
Didn't think so.
And even if you do get a bump could that money have been better spent?
Everyone knows about GoDaddy's 1,500 percent Super Bowl jump in web traffic and the sales spike for Emerald Nuts, but what would those numbers have been had the same money been spent differently?
I'm predicting that the marketers to watch will be the contrarians who don't play this lottery and look to spend elsewhere (like online). Folks like the National Sports Marketing Network, whose members just surveyed said that for the same money, 94 percent would rather spend to launch a product online than for a Super Bowl ad.
As for Sunday's buzz Winners? The Doritos "Mousetrap" ad (beautifully done!), and Anheuser-Busch, which flat out owns the space.
And most impressively the one advertiser that won the Buzz Lottery long before Super Bowl Sunday dawned: Nationwide Mutual Insurance.
How did they get the National Restaurant Association to write that incredibly silly letter? And, more importantly, how can I get them to write one attacking Eepybird.com?
Stephen Voltz
Eepybird
Last year several of us digital agency folk suggested the then $2.4 million was excessive if it failed to extend with other engagements and amplify the truth of the brands. To the affirmative, many of us felt that the investment would be a good start if the consumer could interact. It looks like several savvy marketers are working from this page in their playbook.
A couple of months ago in iMedia Connection, Cory Treffiletti, Real Branding VP of media, proposed a model for analyzing the role of any medium in the mix through the filters of introductory, engagement/dialog and reminder media.
The Super Bowl has been traditionally used as an introductory vehicle -- think dotcom valuation driving efforts -- and more recently to dialog, thanks to the audience mass, advertising draw and blog/water cooler extensibility. In some cases such as what we're seeing from Bud.TV and Doritos, we see the spots actually supporting in a reminder format to programs initiated well in advance of the event, where the digital channel was central and perhaps even lead the strategy and consumer engagement. We expect to see the big wins this year to be in the extended engagement/dialog area.
Creatively, it will still come down to how well the advertising dramatizes a truth of the brand relevantly to the audience. Among the experimentation (user-generated content, promotions and proposals) I've yet to see that many ownable executions that tap into real consumer insights.
So, my prediction for 2007 Super Bowl XLI Advertising: a good start from a better place than last year, but the best is yet to come.
Mark Silva
Principal & Founder
Real Branding
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