Matt Arkin Senior Vice President Advertising Sales TACODA

For $2.5 million I would discuss with Burger King how to use their latest campaign of their King character dubbed in real historical NFL game plays.

I would initially take all the unique users that had viewed Super Bowl news, stats and updates from all the major sporting sites over the 14 days prior to the Super Bowl and target those users as well as users that showed similar behaviors (look-a-like Behavioral Segments) with three, 50 million impression roadblock days following the Super Bowl, and then I'd them user initiated video creative.

The campaign would be to challenge these users to vote for the five best Super Bowl plays of all time, but the key player in all the creative would again be the King dubbed into the real historical plays. Once you have been tracked to view and vote for the five best videos, you are then approved to enter the drawing to go to next years’ Super Bowl.

John Battelle Founder and Chairman Federated Media

FM, of course!

Honestly, that's what I'd do. I'd look for influential conversations where my marketing would be part of the conversation, rather than interrupting it. That's what high quality blogs and community sites have, and that's what FM brings to marketers.

We now have Fark and Digg in the network, for example.

Adam Gerber Vice President of Ad Products and Strategy BrightCove

Let’s not kid ourselves, the Super Bowl is a great reach play. And guess what, it’s also a good investment. It’s not the out-of-pocket cost folks should be focused on; it’s the CPM (which probably ends up between $20 and $30 on total audience), engagement level, and message platform potential.

Do I think there are better investment alternatives for $2.5 million? It depends on two critical client-side issues:

• marketing objectives, and
• their investment in quality creative and cross-platform extensions to extract value from the initial linear broadcast investment

Super Bowl advertisers are traditionally mass market brands. They want to aggregate large audiences and minimize frequency -- especially when in launch mode. The Super Bowl makes sense. Others such as Emerald Nuts and GoDaddy use the show as a showcase for their brands -- to position them with the big boys.

With focus on ROI, one proxy for ROI are the 500 percent, 600 percent, 700 percent increases in web site traffic tied to past Super Bowl investments. Clearly, people are paying attention, and interacting with advertising. And now that Super Bowl “advertisers” are under a “best-of” microscope, the PR component of a Super Bowl ad can actually add to -- or detract from -- overall ROI.

If you’re running a Super Bowl add -- especially if you are a small brand looking to break through -- follow these simple recommendations:

• Invest what’s needed, with enough time, to create a compelling :30 brand engagement. Don’t overspend, and don’t get too cute, unless you want that bottom spot in the creative poll or lots of awareness for everything but your brand cues
• Make sure your :30 is the first component of a multi-platform engagement plan. Leverage the web (e.g., a call to action to website), event marketing, CRM, et cetera. to turn your $2.5 million expense into a $2.5 million+ experience..

People actually pay attention to advertising in the Super Bowl. You don’t need to execute creative antics to break through. Make sure every component of the ad speaks to and delivers against your messaging objectives. Stay focused, and stay true to your brand.

Bottom-line: the Super Bowl if the crown jewel of TiVo-proof live sports, and its still a good deal, but an advertiser just can’t show up to the party. They need to “dress appropriately, and work-the-room” to have the kind of affect most are hoping for.

Jeff Weitzman President and COO Coupons.com

If I was spending the money for a consumer packaged goods company, I’d buy $2.5 million worth of online coupon distribution. But on the off chance I couldn’t get that approved, I’d create a relentlessly data-based marketing program; one that will net me proven sales increases, clear consumer-base segmentation, and a large consumer database with permission to engage in ongoing marketing communications.

I’d take a chunk of the money and build a data warehouse, or improve the one I have, and make sure I’m ready to get the most out of the data I’m going to get. Then I’d buy some broad offline and online media buys, reaching at least as many of my target customers as I would with a Super Bowl ad, including search engine, contextual, and behavioral marketing media.

I would drive traffic to a set of destination websites where I could track the source, ask for an opt-in, ask just a few segmentation questions, and provide coupons on a variety of my products. Those that didn’t opt-in for future marketing would still get coupons, so I can track purchase intent and actual purchase by source and segment, which would inform my future media buys and allow me to work with my partners to create accurate audience models of likely new trial, brand-switching, and brand-loyal consumers.

To those that did opt-in I would send follow-up emails, including an offer to boost open rates and solidify the relationship, and again use the purchase data to refine my segmentation, build out my purchase behavior profile of those segments, and continuing to learn.

Then I’d take all that learning and run segment-specific media campaigns to maximize my return and in-store sales impact. I’d continue to use coupons to monitor the purchase behavior of my various segments and complement aggregated sales volume monitoring.

By the time I’ve used up my $2.5 million, I’d have taken all of my marketing programs, online and offline, to a new level of effectiveness, improving sales for years to come. No championship team relies on the Hail Mary to win games. You establish the ground game, open up the passing game and then crush the competition.

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