Cedar Mill Communications

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Committing to buying a spot in the Super Bowl is always a big risk due to the vast sums of money at stake. For those with the wherewithal to pull it off, a big splash around the Super Bowl may generate more buzz than a year’s worth of mediocrity.

The year’s game, featuring one of football’s biggest stars in Peyton Manning and the feel good story of the past year in the New Orleans Saints, was the most watched TV show in the United States ever with 106.5 million viewers. With all the entertainment options people have now compared to when the previous record was set by the MASH finale in 1983, this is an amazing accomplishment.

Even more astonishing, people don’t DVR the Super Bowl and zip past the ads; instead they sit in groups and watch the ads intently hoping for a big laugh. In my case, I printed out a list of the expected ads from adbowl.com and had the people at the party help me decide on the rankings. (Next year, I’ll be doing this in realtime with the aid of my iPad).

More than just the massive, rapt audience, marketers also get the benefit of all the hype and exposure surrounding the Super Bowl.

And, now, it has caught on with social media.

BtoB magazine reports that of the 38 brands that ran TV spots during the Super Bowl, 75% saw the number of blog posts about their brands double, compared with the average number of blog posts on Sunday evenings over the past six months. Overall, blog posts about the Super Bowl increased to 25,725 this year, up from 15,702 last year. Of these, more than 3,600 posts were specifically related to advertising. Twitter also saw increased Super Bowl-related activity, with more than 720,000 tweets about the game.

Seriously, if you’re a marketer and you’re considering this brand-building extravaganza, do it. But do it right.

Here are a few basic observations on what “right” looks like. It still boggles the mind that companies can get this wrong. I’m not going to bash anyone, but there were some real stinkers in the mix, as there have been in the past.

1. Be clever and funny. David Letterman nailed this with his 10 second spot with Oprah and Leno. Did it help Leno? Who cares, it was funny and led to gobs of media coverage. Learn from this folks. We’re watching the Super Bowl at a party and we want to be amused.
2. Don’t get old and worn out. Hey is anyone home at eTrade and GoDaddy? The baby thing isn’t funny anymore (loved it first time out) and GoDaddy, it’s time to move on. Come up with something new.
3. Big names doing funny things work. The consensus #1 ad this year was Snicker’s with Betty White and Abe Vigoda. Hyunda’s ancient Brett Farve and VW’s Punch Dub with Stevie Wonder and Tracy Morgan also were hits with the audience.
4. If you can’t be funny, sentimental works too. Google’s surprise ad – which had been on YouTube for a few months – about using search for Paris love was fantastic. Our crowd thought that it was the winner.
5. Keep coming back – but with new stuff. Audi’s brand is quickly moving to the top of the charts. The German automaker has been on the Super Bowl roster for a couple of years and had a clever entry this year.
6. Maximize your PR and social media outreach. Be sure to wrap lots of marketing, PR and social media activities around your investment in the Super Bowl.
7. Give stuff away. As was humorously portrayed by terrified chickens, Denny’s used the Super Bowl to promote free Grand Slams on Tuesday. Well it worked. At least one of my neighbors braved the crowds to get her eggs and hash browns.

If you missed out on the Super Bowl, you still have some big sporting events on tap. In particular you might want to think about real football, as in Futbol or Fußball, like what’s played everywhere else on the planet. If the US team makes the World Cup quarterfinals or semifinals it will be huge. Or not. Like it or not, the Super Bowl is the biggest and best brand building machine in the US today.икони

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Too often it seems our world is surprised by violence or death or simply disappointment. I can’t bring myself to read the Wall Street Journal some mornings when the world or the country has had a particularly awful previous day. (The Oregonian doesn’t upset me as much – don’t know why.) But in the past few days I’ve been pleasantly surprised by two events: the birthday of the coining of “serendipity” and a true incidence of the same.

On the first. Serendipity was first coined on January 27, 1754, by British member of Parliament Horace Walpole. In a letter to a friend living in Italy he mentioned he’d come up with the word from a fairy tale called “The Three Princes of Serendip,” in which “as their Highnesses travelled, they were always making discoveries, by accidents and sagacity, of things which they were not in quest of.” Though they were from Serendip – today Sri Lanka – their happy accidents (and I do believe they must have been happy) seems to me the best way to travel.

Which brings me to event two. Our morning dog walk often takes us to a small park near the house. Lost Park isn’t really lost, but it is far from the madding crowds, especially in the mornings after the official work day has begun. This morning we climbed the stairs at the base of the park and heard music drifting over the trees and the tennis courts. As we got further in, it became clear it was trumpet music – random notes, perhaps scales, then gradually bars of a song I thought I could pick out. What could be more charming then a sunny February day in a cool and lush park populated only by two people, three dogs and one trumpet player (with her own dog) playing the Pink Panther theme song?

мебель в болгарии

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