In addition to football, Super Bowl Sunday also offers the Super Bowl of advertising. At
$3,500,000 per 30 second spot the ad inventory was again sold out for this year’s game and the broadcast will likely have reached more than 110 million people around the world. Since big money and big stakes were at hand the anticipation was high prior to the game for some ground-breaking advertisements. Like the Patriots final drive – most of the Super Bowl ads fell flat as far as I am concerned.

Like many, I watched a number of the preview spots before the game. I liked the longer web version of the Honda CR-V spot with Matthew Broderick reprising Ferris Bueller. It was a great job of melding story and product. Clint Eastwood took on Eminem’s role as spokesperson for Detroit in a great spot from Chrysler/Jeep. Tweets during the game suggested Clint should be running for President.

But for me, many of the spots were just okay at best and some worse than that. The Teleflora spot with the gorgeous Adrienne Lima ended up being patronizing and annoying. And the Coca-Cola Polar bears spots left me scratching my head – didn’t they do that already? Sort of like Career Builder and the chimps. I didn’t think they were that great the first time around. GoDaddy – ugh. The madcap Doritos spots are somewhat amusing and the bag of chips looks shiny but far from brilliant advertising. The Taxact.com spot suggesting that peeing in a pool was akin to the relief you will get by using their product was by far the strangest association. I suspect the Taxact.com website was not crashed by customers clamoring to learn more during or after the game.

Volkswagen about a dog getting in shape was several steps down from the Darth Vader spot of 2011’s Super Bowl. The Cars.com double headed dude was just kind of creepy although I did like the song. Jerry Seinfeld and Jay Leno for the Acura NSX were a nice combination highlighting their well-known reputation for being car collectors. And the car looked great. Toyota and Lexus ran a few spots that were ho-hum. The same is true of Budweiser and Bud Light (dog trained to get beer – didn’t they do that already?). The Skechers spot with dogs wearing shoes was fun. Bridgestone’s quiet technology exhibited by Steve Nash dribbling a basketball that made little sound was interesting and well done. GE did a couple of nice brand spots that were a welcome relief from the inanity. NBC did a nice job promoting its new show SMASH.

Overall I cannot pick one spot that was head and shoulder above all the others.

How about you? Share your best and worst spot thoughts with us.

Take a look. Right now I just peeked and saw Chad Pennington (a Quarterback for the Miami Dolphins), apparently tore his ACL playing off-season basketball. One comment on the oft-injured QB was that even without football he can find a way to put himself on injured reserve. Earlier this week there was a trending topic ‘RIP Jackie Chan’. I took a quick scroll down the list and many people were aghast that the news (totally untrue) was shocking but most people did not believe it.

GoDaddy’s CEO Bob Parsons was also a trending topic today – he posted a video of he and some team members on safari in Africa shooting and killing an elephant, the elephant was alleged to have been trampling a sorghum field thus impoverishing local farmers and causing starvation. This will no doubt be all over the news in the next few days with people calling for boycotts of GoDaddy.com.

What makes a trending topic? Obviously the things that people are tweeting about. And (by some counts) with more than 100 million Twitter users that’s a pretty large sample (granted most users actually tweet rarely). So what makes a trending topic is having a substantial number of people Tweet about something that they find interesting and want their followers to see. You can select trending topics to be segmented by country, or even by city. Take a look at what’s trending in Brazil or Turkey for example.

Not all of the trending topics are trivial however. I first saw the news of the tsunami in Japan as a trending topic on Twitter. I immediately searched for more news. The speed at which people tweet an event is mind-boggling at times. I can’t imagine being that plugged into everything that is going on that I would be able to (or want to) be an early tweeter of what will be a trending event.

At the same time trending topics on Twitter do act as a representation of some collective consciousness of what people are thinking about. I find that very interesting and I am betting it will get even more interesting as more people jump into the Tweetstream.

Non-social media users like to make fun of Twitter and readily admit that they don’t get it, and don’t have time for what they consider to be nonsense. As a marketing guy I find the maturation of Twitter and Twitterites (it would be good to settle on one name for those that Tweet I admit) to be a good study of the way human beings interact as well as how communications are evolving.

And I am somewhat relieved but sad to learn that they caught the missing Bronx Zoo Cobra – who which by the way has more than 200,000 followers. And many of the tweets from the @bronxzoocobra were both clever and hilarious. It’s good to laugh at work sometimes.

While the answer is unequivocally yes – we CAN help, what has really happened is the opening of a dialog on their entire marketing effort.   This is frequently much more than the prospect or friend has bargained for.  Yet we feel we are doing a disservice to anyone by simply nodding and saying ‘Sure we’ll do a website for you’, without knowing much (or enough) about their business, its focus and challenges.   

Keep in mind that in order for our agency to do a really good job on a website, a substantial amount of intelligence has to be gained in order to understand the objective and create an interesting, cool, and highly intuitive website.   Smaller businesses frequently have more budget restrictions than larger ones and that’s no surprise.  But whether the business is small or large, having a website is important but it may not be the most important marketing activity their business needs to move forward.  

Our digital and direct marketing agency is not looking to compete with the GoDaddy.com website model.    If inexpensive is what the mission is, then sites like GoDaddy (there are others) can provide template solutions that enable the user to plug in content (photos, text, links) and get a web presence all with hosting for $ 1,000 or less.   True you will not benefit from our agency’s (or any agency’s) years of experience in usability and creative design, but if spending as little money as possible is needed, then do the work yourself and you will have a web ‘presence’. 

What those template solutions will also not do is ask you questions about the business and its direction.   We have had clients ask us about creating a new website and ended up not only doing that and we end up helping their business market its services in many other ways.   Other times we may not revamp the website as a primary strategy. 

One of our team members likened an inquiry about a new website is often a marketing cry for help.   I think that is true in many cases.  What we can uncover during our discovery process in developing a new or updating and old website is at times surprising to everyone – client and agency.   Once we get to that point the real work can begin and what results is a better engagement and better result for the client. 

We’re in business to give our clients all that they ask for and more.  Sometimes that can be more than they want or even need.  But the questions always have to be asked to determine what we feel is the best marketing path for the client.  It might be a new website and then again it might not. 

Do you think I am off base here?

The game will draw 100,000,000 plus viewers.  In the last 20 years, Anheuser-Busch has spent more than $300 million on Super Bowl commercials, Pepsi $254 million and GM just over $80 million, according to TNS.   What really surprised me is that the Pro Bowl played Sunday night had its best viewership since 2000 drawing 12.3 million viewers.  A game that the players don’t want to play in – you would think people would have something (anything!) better to do.  The Grammy’s drew twice the viewership and was an infinitely better show (I am guessing since I watched the Grammy’s and did not watch a minute of the Pro Bowl).   

And what of the game itself this coming Sunday?  Kickoff at 6:40PM and The Who performing at halftime.  But little is noted about the game itself.  The New Orleans Saints have an opportunity to both win their first Super Bowl and continue to help resurrect a fallen city.  The Indianapolis Colts led by 4-time Most Valuable Player Peyton Manning are hoping to validate a decision to give up the pursuit of a perfect season.  Only a Super Bowl win will accomplish that.  

For me – it’s about the food (chicken wings and chili) and drinks.  Our family and friends spend time together many of whom watch normally no more than half the game, (although in recent years the games have been really good).   

So I like both the ads and the game but as a sports enthusiast I prefer the game.  How about you?