It may be a toss up today whether the talk around the office will be more about the game (way to go Giants) or about the commercials. The commercials of course are a big draw for many and at least an entertaining bonus for others. Big name companies employ big name ad firms to come up with something that will hopefully be extraordinary and memorable. And at $2.7 million for 30 seconds, getting the most bang for the buck should be a no-brainer.
But unlike some of the popular TV shows, if the Super Bowl ads are any indication, it appears that many big companies and ad firms just don't get it and continue to deliver "Ads 1.0." Perhaps it is the big brand mentality that we so often see when dealing with the Web, but I'm not even talking about full-blown social media campaigns here--how about just getting the URL up on the screen.
After re-watching the commercials from the game over at MySpace, I saw that more commercials had URLs shown than I remembered. But the fact that it took another viewing and perhaps a freeze frame of the video to catch it is very telling. What's more amazing is that many of these advertisers spend huge amounts year-round on brand advertising--just building up impressions, maintaining that top-of-mind presence of keeping the brand out in front of people. This type of advertising should be all about capitalizing on building that connection with the audience, and what better way to do that than to get them to the Web site.
Never mind whether the commercial is a hit or a dud, it is still an impression, and the last thing I'd want to leave the viewer with would be how to see more about the company or the product. A number of the ads didn't feature a URL at all, and for many that did, it was so insignificant to even matter (especially when these end up in small video windows online). Only a handful of the ads made sure that the last few seconds of the precious 30 left the viewer with a clearly readable and hopefully memorable URL.
Thankfully though, not all of the companies missed the mark. There were a couple standouts that do get it, like Tide, with MyTalkingStain.com, and SoBe Life Water, with Thrillicious.com. They developed sites around the commercials to continue the conversation after the season wraps up. With some online interactivity, these are great examples of making the most of traditional advertising in a Web world. Hopefully if or when these standalone sites are decommissioned, they'll also be savvy enough to put 301 permanent redirects in place to capture continued traffic, PageRank, and link love.
The good news is that there is a year before the next Super Bowl for the company and ad execs to start thinking about how they can get more value out of the big game. Here's a little food for thought:
- Get your URL up in the last 5 to 10 seconds and make it big and easy to read, not just on the big screen, but for when they make their way to online.
- Put commercial outtakes or bloopers up on the site.
- Get the commercial out on YouTube or other video sites as soon as it airs.
- Give people a reason to stay on the site--coupons, games, tips.
- Give people a way to interact--put together a blog and have a number of posts ready to launch out of the gate and allow visitors to comment and discuss the ad.
- Look to other social media venues to round out the campaign--MySpace, Facebook, StumbleUpon, etc.
And that's really just the tip of the iceberg, but at this rate, better to aim at crawling before we worry about running.
Social media has certainly come into its own over the last year. Whether you log more hours online than you do sleeping or are the type that only turns your computer on every couple of days — gasp — there is a good chance that you have some familiarity with social media, even if you didn't know that's what it was.
Maybe you get a chuckle every now and then from a video on YouTube, upload photos to Flickr for friends and family to see, ask and answer questions on Yahoo Answers, do a little networking and reconnecting with old classmates and work colleagues on LinkedIn, keep track of popular news on Reddit, jot notes on your mates' walls in Facebook, or have carved out your own little corner of the web with a MySpace page. If you have a username and login at even half of those sites, then you know all to well the impact of social media. And for many, that list is but a mere sampling of their social circle.
But what happens when social media collides with daily life? Good, bad, or otherwise, most of us live extremely busy lives. We've found that all of the great tools that have been developed to simplify our lives and allow us more time, often just allow us to do more with the time we have. Is that a bad thing? After all, it is our life and if we are doing the things we want to do and that are important to us, wasn't that the ultimate goal to begin with? If you are expecting answers to those questions, sorry, they aren't coming.
The problem, or at least the challenge, with social media for individuals is simply one of mass. There is only so much time during the day and night that any one of us can put toward the social media venues. At some point, most of us will probably gravitate to a few key sites. Will this gravitation be a slow fade, or cold turkey? Will it be individually, or a revolt of mass proportions? Only time will tell of course.
But hold that thought. The story for businesses is a little different. Social media provides a powerful channel to reach out and interact with the community. While things in business rarely come without a cost, social media can be an extremely cost effective extension of nearly everything a company does. Even as social venues shift in popularity or come and go, businesses can introduce themselves and interact with those who share the same interests. As marketing channels go, the ability to connect with highly targeted, highly interested individuals at a personal level, is pretty hard to beat.
So while the future and popularity of individual social media venues may as yet be undetermined, and individual users' levels of interaction may vary, social media is here to stay. There's so much more that could be said, but I have to go check my Facebook page.
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