Comments on: Did online companies market their brands well at the Super Bowl?

Online firms came out in force at this year's Super Bowl. We take a look at their ads and see how well they did at promoting their brand.

[firestarter]

CareerBuilder - ok not a ad i will really remember
Cars.com - ok as well
E*Trade - Very funny as always
GoDaddy - just plain sucked and so juvenile.
Hulu - smart ad and at the right time
teleflora.con - was just sooo funny

[rjpittman]

Nice analysis Don. Very well thought out, and clearly articulated. My only slight disagreement was on the e*Trade ad. I think the comedy is brilliant, and the ads spark over-the-top curiosity within the financial services arena that offsets the need for explicit features run down. That said, I also concur that the Hulu ad was flawless in its execution, and managed to do both entertainment and informative extremely well. Best executed ad of the lot.

[karpenterskids]

GoDaddy's ads are AWEFUL.
In every aspect.

In fact, I plan on using a non-GoDaddy company, simply because of their ads.

E*trade and Cars.com's ads were very effective, in my opinion...they both humoured me to the point where I remembered the company's name. In a good way.

Career Builder's ad was ALSO very effective...I hear a lot of people say that it was "stupid" or "too repetitive", but in my opinion, that's what made it so different! It kept going and going!

And Hulu's, I agree, was probably the best use of a superbowl commercial I've seen in my lifetime.
Hulu is a site that [sadly] not everyone is familiar with. And yet, there are countless people watching TV on a regular basis, wishing they could watch it on their computer as well. Hulu's ad, although expensive, will undoubtedly bring in hundreds (if not thousands) of new video-watchers to their site.

[trueseek1]

Many of the ads were ugly and offensive. Watching with children as pornography is splat into our living room sent several company's brand name in the gutter with the red light district. So sad to spend millions to offend more millions of potential customers. We can do so much better than that. Our future and our children are counting on us. NBC CEO Jeff Zucker and NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell made one of the dumbest business moves of the year.

[darthstupid]

Most of these ads were garbage. Nobody will will remember any of them after a week.

@trueseek1 Grow up. You sound like a naive 6th grader. Wake me when civilization ends.

[soccerjemz]

I did not see Pepsi mentioned. If you ask me, and I know you won't, the "Pepsuber" was a creative and humorous approach. It was an obvious spoof on MacGyver that had Saturday Night personalities selling the gig. I forget most of the products from the game. But "Pepsuber" will remain a personal. favorite. To grab the older audience, the orgiginal "MacGyver," Richard Dean Anderson was in the clip.

Something else to mention is confusion sells. Some of the top products listed across the web are the ones that were "poor" in their Super Bowl advertising stint. Again, the critics are part of the ad. If I know this, you can bet the pros do, too.

My final thought is a question. Do combo ads exist? I do not mean ads with celebrities. I mean, are there any ads that try to see different products in one blitz (pardon the pun)? In the Audi commercial, when the car went through a highway poster, I saw some kind of lipstick on the poster. Do ad companies join to lower the cost for a Super Bowl slot? Just wondering.

[ikramerica--2008]

The Hulu ad was genius. It was Alec Baldwin's 30 Rock character taken to the extreme conclusion, and it made no bones about the fact that watching TV is probably not good for us, but if you must, why not use hulu to do it more effectively? Heck, the cigarette companies could learn something from hulu... ;)

[dcommins]

I also agree with the others about GoDaddy. Their marketing approach is one of the worst I've seen and makes me wonder if they company is interested in attracting intelligent customers. Right after the ads aired, we moved our domains to another service and I hope they actually see a negative impact as a result of their consistently sleazy marketing campaign. It's NoDaddy for me.

[cnetnw]

What's with the 3D-ads? It is quite frustrating when one can't find the glasses easily. [check out blog post at http://tinyurl.com/armuay]

[cnetnw]

blog post at http://tinyurl.com/armuay

[warrenzeller]

The Hulu ad was brilliant. NBC owned Hulu leveraged the eyeballs with 100 million homes tuned in for the game, NBC produced a ?big celebrity, high production value? spot promoting the opportunity to re-watch and vote for your favorite Super Bowl ad today on their site Hulu. When you go to the Hulu site every SB ad is sponsored by yet another new advertiser.
This is an excellent example of leveraging the power of a live event and creating a compelling reason to go to their NBC owned web site?Hulu. The other strategically excellent move was to not let the average consumer know that NBC owns Hulu. That gives Hulu its own voice and sense of credibility.

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