Can you communicate what a Web site is about to millions of sports fans looking for entertainment above all else? Now that the Super Bowl is over, let's examine how well the online firms that bought ads fared in delivering spots that effectively communicated their online services.
Some companies did well. But it looks like others left viewers scratching their heads...
CareerBuilder
Online career search service CareerBuilder offered up a 60-second ad for the Super Bowl that used the tagline, "It might be time (to look for another job)" after providing examples of thoughts some workers might have when they're upset with their careers. My favorite: sitting next to a man who clips his toenails in the office...in his underwear.
It might have been somewhat entertaining, but CareerBuilder's ad didn't explain how the company would help job-seekers and opted instead, to deliver its URL at the end of the commercial. For those who have heard of CareerBuilder, that may have been enough. But for others who have never been to the company's site, the commercial won't answer why they should go there to find a job. Shouldn't that have been the point of the ad in the first place?
Cars.com
Cars.com is a popular destination for people who want to research, sell, or buy a car. But the company's Super Bowl commercial takes viewers through the life of David Abernathy, a supremely capable and confident individual who achieved great success in his life. Towards the end of the ad, Cars.com is finally mentioned as David worries about buying a car. Evidently, the online hub helped him in that endeavor.
Most of the commercial had nothing to do with cars at all. And even when the narrator finally mentioned the site, it only left about 10 seconds for the viewer to gain a solid understanding of what Cars.com is all about.
The commercial did tell viewers that Cars.com will help them buy a car, but it failed to inform them about the other site features they may have been interested in, like research and the option to sell their vehicles. Maybe that was Cars.com's intention all along, but I'm not convinced that talking about just one of its offerings for a few seconds in 30-second commercial is all that effective.
E*Trade
With the help of two babies, E*Trade Financial used its 30-second Super Bowl ad to promote its investment services. During the first 20 seconds of the commercial, the babies mentioned the troublesome economy and their need for a tool like E*Trade to help them "take control" of their investments. The ad ended with a narrator asking viewers to open one of the "1,000 new accounts opened each day" and "take control with E*Trade."
Much like other companies, E*Trade used its Super Bowl ad to provide more entertainment value than brand promotion. Sure, the babies were entertaining and it got a chuckle out of me, but simply saying that users can "take control" of their investments with E*Trade doesn't tell me what the company does.
E*Trade could have promoted its brand more effectively if it eliminated the banter between the babies and had them discuss all the features E*Trade offers instead. Without that, users who have never used or heard of E*Trade only know that the company lets them "take control" of their investments. But how?
GoDaddy
Domain registrar GoDaddy has always been known to provide sexy commercials to promote its brand. This year's two Super Bowl ads were no different.
Dubbed "Shower," GoDaddy's first ad showed race car driver Danica Patrick, jumping into a shower as a group of boys watched. The other, named "Enhanced," brings Patrick and three other women into a courtroom to discuss "enhancements." The ad is meant to make viewers believe that the women are discussing enhancements of the anatomical sort, but Patrick says that she "enhanced her brand" by buying a domain name through GoDaddy.
GoDaddy's "Shower" commercial didn't say anything about GoDaddy's services and its story had nothing to do with domain registration. That said, it did ask viewers to watch the "unrated" version of the commercial on GoDaddy.com. That's a ploy the company has been using for years, so it must work.
The "Enhanced" commercial does a better job of discussing what GoDaddy actually does. That said, it only mentioned domains in passing and even then it was sandwiched between discussions about enhancements that may or may not have been made to the actresses' bodies. Suffice it to say that domain registration wasn't the memorable part of that commercial.
Hulu
Online video site Hulu offered up an ad, called "Alec in Huluwood" for the Super Bowl, starring veteran actor Alec Baldwin. The 60-second ad takes place in an underground laboratory where Baldwin discusses in detail how Hulu will ensure you won't escape TV content, while reducing your brain "to a cottage cheese-like mush." The spot ends with a tentacle emerging from Baldwin's suit jacket and his claim that "we're aliens, and that's how we roll."
Hulu may have taken a decidedly extreme tack to promote its brand, but it did that exceptionally well. Combining a star from one of TV's hottest comedies, 30 Rock, along with some comedy, the commercial kept audiences captivated as Baldwin skillfully laid out the business model of Hulu: "Hulu beams TV to your portable computing devices, giving you more of the cerebral gelatinizing shows you want anytime, anywhere, for free."
Before the commercial aired, Hulu was known to a relatively small number of people in the Super Bowl viewing audience. But after the ad aired, everyone knew what Hulu is, how it works, and most importantly, that it's free.
It was a perfectly-crafted commercial from both an entertainment and marketing perspective.
Monster
Job search service Monster unveiled a 30-second spot for the Super Bowl that saw the camera swing 180-degrees around a wall. On one side, the boss of a company had a moose's head hanging from the wall in his beautiful office. On the other side, the rest of the animal's body was resting in the middle of an employee's desk as the narrator asked if it's time to find another job. After that, the narrator mentioned how many job listings are on the site and how to get there.
Monster's ad may have been simple, but it was extremely effective. It provided viewers with some entertainment--a must at the Super Bowl--but it used it to get to the marketing side of the ad, which mentioned the company's "millions of job listings."
Perhaps most important, Monster's ad included the company's URL: Monster.com. Many of the viewers may have already known it and even if the company didn't add the ".com", some would find their way to the site. But spelling it out makes it easier for the viewer and gets them to the site sooner. It's a simple thing, but it shouldn't have been overlooked by so many of the other companies advertising their brands at the Super Bowl--be they Web-based businesses or not.
Overstock.com
Online discount retailer Overstock.com made an appearance in this year's Super Bowl with the help of NBA player, Carlos Boozer. The ad starts with Boozer at a computer scrolling through Overstock's listings. Children standing around Boozer ask him what different products around his home are and he responds with the percentage discount. The ad ends with one child picking up his 2008 Olympic Gold medal asking him what it is. "That's about 20 years of dedication, right there," he responded.
I don't quite see the point of the ad. When Overstock's Web page is shown in the beginning of the commercial, there's no way to tell which site it is. You can't even see its logo in the few seconds that it's displayed.
Worse, the discount percentages Boozer throws out mean nothing without context, which eventually comes at the very end of the commercial when the company's logo and name are displayed. In the process, there was little indication given to the viewer about why they should choose Overstock over any other online retail destination.
Priceline
Priceline, the online travel deals site, featured William Shatner in its ad this year. The ad starts with a married couple discussing their desire to go on vacation, but eventually realizing that they couldn't afford it. Shatner, who was outside their home in a van, tells the husband to repeat after him and goes on to explain to the wife how they can save money on a four-star hotel by using Priceline. He does so, at times dropping into the old Captain Kirk-style of speech with its halting cadence. The ad ends with the wife agreeing to book the reservation.
Priceline's commercials are barely different each time they air, but they work. The ad offered some entertainment value and throughout, the message was made clearly to the audience: if you want to save money when you travel, listen to Priceline. Whether or not that's true is a different story. But the ad left little doubt in the viewers' minds. It was well crafted.
A New York State court judge denied on Monday Amazon.com and Overstock.com's attempt to avoid lawmaker demands that the online retailers collect sales tax from New York state residents, even though the companies don't have a physical presence in the state. Neither company has commented on the decision, but there is a strong possibility that the case could move into the Court of Appeals as Amazon and Overstock continue their fight.
CollegeWikis, an online group for college students to send messages and create their own groups based on class year, dorm, or courses, has become Regroup.com. More importantly, the service also announced Tuesday that it's now integrated with Facebook Connect and that users can finally create private groups. The site's redesign and new features are live now.
KickApps, the online video player and social media platform, announced Tuesday the release of KickApps App Studio, which will provide drag-and-drop widget and video player services to users who wish to add third-party tools. According to the company, its users can create "highly customized" embeddable Flash applications using drag-and-drop functionality. And through KickApps' new partnership with Yahoo and Meebo, users can integrate Meebo Rooms and Yahoo Maps into their widget. KickApps says that more third-party partnerships are on the way. Plug-in APIs will be available in the second quarter.
iPhone developer Gorloch Interactive announced Tuesday that it has launched Boombox, a music streaming service for the iPhone and iPod Touch that uses Blip.fm's song library. Users are able to create playlists and purchase those songs from iTunes. The app is free and available now on iTunes.
The Washington Post announced Tuesday that it will provide live video coverage of President-elect Barack Obama's inaugural events on January 20. The show will start at 5 a.m. PST when the Obama family leaves the Blair House and conclude when the inauguration parade is complete. Post reporters using cell phone video cameras will talk with those on-hand and include the interviews in the live recording.
A class action lawsuit filed earlier this week targets Facebook and eight of the participants in Beacon, its ill-fated advertising product that shared information about third-party site activity with the social network. The set of 20 plaintiffs, mostly residents of Texas, filed the suit in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California on Tuesday. Named as defendants are Facebook, as well as current or former Beacon participants Blockbuster, Fandango (owned by Comcast), Overstock.com, STA Travel, Zappos, Hotwire (owned by IAC/InterActiveCorp), and GameFly.
A Facebook representative told CNET News on Thursday that the company had not yet actually been served with the lawsuit, and that its legal team consequently did not have a formal statement at the time. STA Travel, Gamefly, and Overstock all declined to comment; none of the other defendants could be immediately reached.
"Until we're served, we're not being sued, so we don't have any comment," Overstock general counsel Mark Griffin told CNET News.
Beacon gained almost immediate notoriety when Facebook unveiled it as part of its Facebook Ads announcement last fall. Privacy advocates, most notably liberal activist group MoveOn.org, lambasted the program for not allowing users to disable it easily. Facebook has since modified the program and the controversy has wound down. But in the lawsuit, the plaintiffs point to the window of time before Facebook instituted the new controls--between November 7 and December 5 of last year--and claims that the social network still has access to a large amount of user data that was gathered in that period.
"If the user was not a member (of Facebook), Facebook still obtained the notification from the Facebook Beacon Activated Affiliate," the filing for Lane et al v. Facebook, Inc. read. "Information regarding user activities was sent in real time to a third party Web site--one which was not open or active in the user's browser, and one which, in many cases, the user may never even have visited or heard of."
There's one odd law that may make the plaintiffs' case stronger: the Video Privacy Protection Act of 1988. The law was passed amid the fracas surrounding Robert Bork's controversial nomination to the U.S. Supreme Court, when a journalist obtained Bork's movie rental record from a local video store and published it.
That's why there's already been a suit involving Beacon that specifically targeted Blockbuster for participating in such a program: a Texas woman filed suit against Blockbuster in April, claiming that the VPPA bars it from Beacon. Facebook was not named as a defendant in that suit, and though the plaintiff sought class action status for her case, she does not appear to have any involvement in this week's suit.
The defendants named in the suit don't encompass all of Facebook's original Beacon partners, but several of them could tie into VPPA protections: GameFly rents video games, Fandango sells movie tickets, Hotwire and STA deal with travel bookings, and Zappos and Overstock are both online retailers with a large scope (Overstock sells DVDs, for example). The suit also names the California Computer Crime Law and the Electronic Communications Privacy Act as grounds for the suit.
One of the plaintiffs, Sean Lane of Waltham, Mass., was immortalized in a Washington Post story about Beacon: He's the guy who bought his wife a diamond ring on Overstock.com, only to have her spot the purchase in a Facebook news feed, spoiling the surprise.
Guess he's still irritated.
Discount online retailer Overstock.com announced on Thursday that it will be selling its products outside the United States for the first time.
"We're actually right smack dab in the middle of integrating," Jake Bailey, Overstock's director of international sales, said in an interview with CNET News.com on Thursday. No final date has been given for the launch of international sales, but Bailey said it will be before the end of 2008.
The Salt Lake City, Utah-based company has inked a deal with E4X, which runs a service called FiftyOne Global Ecommerce. The partnership has enabled Overstock to start billing and shipping to a total of 34 new countries--Canada, as well as 33 European nations. FiftyOne lets a participating retailer ship to a U.S. address and receive U.S. currency, while the buyer pays in his or her home currency.
Not all of Overstock's products will be able to be shipped overseas. Some bulky products, like massive HDTVs and large pieces of furniture, will continue to be available only in the States. But, Bailey said, "for the most part, it's going to be the bulk of our product offering."
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