During the days when we had a physical marketing agency and an office, we had our chance to gather around the water cooler following the Super Bowl, to discuss the aftermath of the commercial blitz (and oh yeah, the game).
This year we take the opportunity to have the discussion on our Overflow podcast.
It seems we are about to enter an age where the expenditure for advertising in a mass market venue such as the big game will be followed closely by interaction in the social networking space.
The spot promoting Denny’s free grand slam breakfast for one day only, is generating a massive buzz on Twitter and blogs, anticipating and chronicling the crowds gathered to feast.
So from a measurement perspective, the best “creative” ads.. the ones that used to win the recognition… might not be the “best” ads in terms of executing the objectives. It will be the ads that can generate direct consumer interaction that will be recognized over the long haul as the most influential.
At one time, USA Today was the place to check for the feedback and recognition of the ads that were voted as best, however digging into the details of this year’s Ad Meter, 288 adults were given meters to rate their responses to the spots. In this day and age of instant, real time feedback at social networks .. the results are dubious at best.
A great example of engaging the audience in real time, generating some excitement, and finally making a direct call to action after the spot aired came from ETrade.The Etrade baby was tweeting ( humorously) as well as following up with an invitation to check out the outakes for their spot at the company web site. The Etrade baby is following 628 people currently and had engagement throughout the game. My only advice to the company at this point is to start following people back and work on direct engagement beyond just making posts.
There was also a bit of community backlash happening during the broadcast including serious lashing out against Go Daddy. They have created these spots in the past, so is it possible that there has been this same sentiment all along and the company wasn’t aware of it due to in ability to engage directly with their customers? Have they completely misread their audience?
A fun way to look at what was on everyone’s mind during the game is a visual tweet stream shown in a map format on New York Times.com. You can see key words in Tweets during certain moments during the game hitting the stream. Brands can gain some great insight from this viewpoint.
Where is this all headed? Are we going to see engagement at a greater level during the Super Bowl in 2010, with twitter profile names included in the spot?
…. On to Daytona
