Safety first?
With the continued growth in the digital space, it's hard to see why the year's No. 1 advertising event would opt for a traditional approach.
For Cheyney, the answer could be as simple as internal politics within agencies that have done a poor job of breaking down their silos. But Broitman thinks the reason for a cautious approach from brands this year has more to do with reactions from years past.
"Look at what happened with UGC," Broitman says. "Only Doritos used UGC, and they did it as a kind of a hybrid (Doritos ran a spot with a singer who won its MySpace contest). I think some brands feel like they went too far in the past, and this year it was about being safe. Maybe next year we'll see something in the middle."
According to Seidner, the fast pace of change today has left many brands and agencies in the lurch, trying desperately to figure out what will take off without a firm understanding of an ever-changing media environment.
In such a complex media landscape, the solution for many brands may have been as simple as to put out what they believed to be their most engaging, compelling creative spots, hoping that users would take the ball from there.
For Grudnowski, the uncertainty of today's media seems to have left marketers with two options: carefully crafted, fully integrated campaigns that direct users through a series of online experiences, or a more amorphous reliance on virally geared creatives that rely on consumers to further disseminate the message through the digital space.
Conclusion
In the days and weeks that follow, a slew of measurement firms will come out with statistics identifying which Super Bowl spots delivered in what has become a multimillion-dollar, 30-second buy. While it may be easy to apply a subjective analysis of what made for a "good commercial," and easier still to identify winners and losers based on metrics like total views and buzz through the blogosphere, one question marketers won't easily be able to answer is whether a hands-on, integrated strategy is preferential to a less directed approach.
That question -- the nuts and bolts of how best to integrate between platforms -- will likely be an open one for the foreseeable future. In the meantime, we invite our readers to offer their insights in the form of comments below.
Michael Estrin is associate editor at iMediaConnection. Read full bio.