Ever since I could remember, I’ve watched the Super Bowl strictly for the commercials. Not being a huge NFL fan, the game doesn’t really all that much matter to me (however, I did pull for the NY Giants this year). But in the past few years I feel like the commercials have gone downhill, and from what I can gather, I’m not the only one. This year I took notes on the commercials and did a bit of analyzing.
Of the 60 commercials I kept tabs on (I excluded all FOX commercials and may have included locally shown commercials), it broke down to 41 brands who spent the dollars (approximately $2.7 million dollars for 30 seconds!) to air several sub-par commercials. It wasn’t until yesterday that I realized there wasn’t much integration with the online channels that many of these brands have created. Only 23 brands listed URLs in their commercials! You’d think with spending that much money on a commercial(s), they’d do everything possible to extend the brand experience online. Of the 23 URLs displayed along the way, 13 were direct links to the brand’s website, 3 were URLs that either mirrored or redirected to the same page used as the homepage, and 7 were microsites dedicated to the campaign.
What’s even more surprising to me is that many recognizable brands didn’t include their website URL on their commercials (Coca-Cola, Bud Light, Budweiser, Victoria’s Secret, and Gatorade). Yes, we’re familiar with your brands, but are we familiar with what you’re doing online? Maybe, but why chance it? With the way marketing is heading, it’s safe to say all of the brands have a website, but is the URL known? Make it easy for consumers to find you and put your address in front of them when they’re captive!
I have to admit, my favorite commercial was the Tide-to-Go talking stain, it was priceless (and so true). I have a hard time focusing on what someone is saying if there’s a stain on their shirt, so distracting! In case you missed it, you can view the commercial here. The microsite allows visitors to watch the ad again, participate in contests, as well as take part in filming a spoof and interacting with their channel on YouTube. To me, Tide-to-Go got it right this year: entertaining commercial, microsite dedicated to the commercial, and social/interactive/engaging aspects of the site. Way to go!
And in case you missed any of the other commercials, you can view them on MySpace – they have them hosted for your convenience. And if you’re interested, I’ve listed out the brands (and linked to their sites) that make up the numbers mentioned above.
One simply has to marvel at a man who, in Microsoft, has built an unquestionable empire. However, nowhere in my years of following Bill Gates have I thought “I’d like to watch football and have a beer with that guy.” He has, in fact, always been portrayed as a man with no personality (if not an evil one). Think back to Pirates of Silicon Valley.
Tangent: I actually just had a conversation with a couple of co-workers last week about Geeks being the new Cool. It’s true. I remember somewhere around 6 or 7 years ago watching an episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer (shameful, I don’t know why I just admitted that) where Buffy called a group of kids at her school “geeks.” These would be the computer lab-frequenting, Internet-savvy group of future business moguls she was referring to. I was insulted on behalf of all “geeks.”
Years later we live in a time where you’re not “with it” unless you have a Facebook account, the latest and greatest smart phone, and know who John Hodgman and Justin Long are. Even better, the more somebody knows about technology - the cooler they are.
On the brink of departure from his day-to-day job at Microsoft (set for July), Bill decided to have some fun during a keynote at CES 2008 by showing a scripted, yet very entertaining video where we get a glimpse of how cool and fun he can actually be.
In a parody of what Bill’s last day on the job at Microsoft might be like, he endlessly pokes fun at himself - from workouts with Matthew McConnaughey where he’s told he’s “not ready” to take his shirt off, to an awkward experience with JayZee where his hopes of a rap career are dashed.
Sometimes the coolest people are those that embrace the parts of themselves that others might pick on. I had a blast watching this video!
I think of Greenpeace as an inherently serious and dedicated group (whether you agree with their tactics or not). If I were Greenpeace, I would WANT to be taken seriously given the cause. SO, I was a bit surprised that they came up with a mascot for their ‘Save the Whales’ campaign that was a bit ‘cartoony’. To top it off they held a ‘Name the Whale’ contest that allowed people to suggest names for the whale and let the public vote on the winner. However, when someone suggested the name “Mr. Splashy Pants“, well, they weren’t too happy.
As a side note - just add ‘Mr.’ (or Mrs.) to the front of something and ‘pants’ to the end, and it’s funny… in a junior high sort of way. Just start calling me ‘Mrs. Bloggy pants’. See? Not, I suspect, what Greenpeace was after.
Of course, to add insult to injury, the name went viral. Votes for Mr. Splashy pants skyrocketed. Then a funny thing happened - Greenpeace started to embrace Mr. Splashy pants. Mr. Splashy pants merchandise cropped up everywhere and people love it! To Greenpeace’s credit, they’re riding the tide (pun intended). However, time will tell how effective this campaign is to their cause.
The moral here is:
If you’re going to run a contest, make sure you have some controls in place
If you want to be taken seriously, don’t have a cartoon as a mascot
Take a quick look into the past of some of the best and worst social media has dished out. From our friend and prankster Nalts to Mentos, this video shows just how fast this landscape is moving. Buckle up for a great synopsis and get ready for a terrible rendition of Billy Joel’s - “We didn’t Start the Fire” by Cakke.
Disney’s ToonTown Online is a massively multiplayer online game (MMOG). Although Disney has opened this game to people of all ages, it is clearly geared toward children 12 years of age or younger. With ToonTown’s user base steadily growing, they recently made the decision to open the game for marketing and advertising.
About ToonTown:
ToonTown offers both free accounts and membership accounts. In order to make gameplay more “exclusive,” Disney made the chat feature available only to members. For those with free accounts, there is ”speed-chat”, which essentially allows users to quickly select from preset phrases. Normal chat can only be used between two players and they must both enter a password (which must be told outside of the game, to ensure that only friends chat together).
It is my belief that the game is open to all ages in order to allow parents to monitor the gameplay of their children, since the game is very clearly designed for youngsters. However, after opening the game to advertisers, Disney may continue to leave the game “open to all ages” so that marketers and advertisers can more easily monitor the sucesses of their marketing efforts.
Advertisers:
Even though Disney has opened up to marketers, I couldn’t find any sign of an advertisement for anything other than Disney itself. So, it doesn’t look like any companies have jumped on that band wagon yet.
My opinion is that the problem lies in the fact that only small children play the game - meaning most companies that would be interested in advertising in ToonTown would have products for children. This could present a problem for Disney since the most likely companies to advertise children’s products come from rivaling television networks (e.g. Cartoon Network and Nickelodeon) - as many popular children’s toys are the result of merchandising for those network’s television shows. Since the major children-geared companies are rivals with Disney they may not be willing to advertise (or even if they wanted to Disney might have something to say about it). This could leave only the smaller children’s companies who might not have the marketing dollars to allocate for advertising in such an emerging medium as virtual worlds.
My Two Cents:
Although advertising in this game wouldn’t be HARD to do, finding an advertiser who isn’t a rival company may prove difficult for the Disney empire. If you’d like more info about Disney’s ToonTown, visit: http://play.toontown.com/about.php.
Back in June, NBC’s dotcomedy.com launched The Lunch Break Show, a new diversion for those of us that eat at our desk to save time during the day. Arby’s was the sole sponsor and the site is plastered with Arby’s branding and links to their TV commercials. Although it seems to have hit the news release channels back in June, I only recently stumbled across it and found it interesting enough to share the links and some thoughts for any of you who might have missed it the first time around.
The Concept:
The top of the original press release states quite obviously where the idea came from: “According to a recent survey by Kelton Research, nearly 60 percent of office workers in the U.S. spend their lunch breaks at their desks looking for distractions.”
So, it seems that NBC and Arby’s decided to go after this target market by throwing together a 30-minute collection of short segments taken from the previous day’s comedy shows on NBC and inviting office workers to ‘tune in’ between 12:00pm and 2:00 pm to watch the show while eating lunch at their desk.
The Experience:
Open http://www.thelunchbreakshow.com/ in a browser outside the time of 12:00pm - 2:00pm and you will see a page that explains quickly what the show is about and a form to register for email alerts each day before the show begins that only requires a Zip Code and an Email. There is also a countdown to the next show.
Open http://www.thelunchbreakshow.com/ in a browser between 12:00pm - 2:00pm and you will see the video which loops through the 30 minute segment repeatedly, along with a funny little PANIC button.
Thoughts:
I love the idea, it got me interested enough to try it out, but I had some problems with the experience.
Design - I enjoyed the website design and loved the funny little Panic button that pops-up a screen with numbers and lines all over it to make it look like you are doing something important.
Email Reminder - The email comes at 9:30am for me, and there is no way that is going to help me remember the show at lunch. It is buried in my email by that time, and I have to consciously think about the show and go and dig up the email to find the link. (If I haven’t bookmarked or tagged it already)
The Video – The video has some great spots in it each day, and I can always find something to chuckle at. However, you can’t pause it, rewind it, or skip ahead. Here comes the rub. I get what they are trying to do. However, I find it hard to believe that the same people who are clicking around online for entertainment at lunch can’t pause and rewind TV at home with some sort of DVR. I found it very frustrating. A colleague came up to me and asked a question during the show, and I missed something I wanted to hear, and couldn’t pause it or rewind it and I wasn’t about to wait another 30 minutes to catch that segment again.
So to wrap things up, I enjoyed the website and the video, but ultimately got turned off by the lack of ability to interact with the video. I wonder what their drop-off statistics look like because it feels as if they missed the mark a bit on how their demographic would want to interact with the site once they actually got there.
Links:
To give credit where credit is due, I stumbled across it here at MediaPost in an article that gives a few facts about the campaign.
If you’ve been living in a cave or had the great fortune to go on vacation to someplace like, oh I don’t know, Bermuda (I hate you John Waddy), then maybe you’ve missed the Simpsons Movie marketing attack that’s been in full force for months now. I finally found what I’ve been looking for - a list of the many ultra-creative ways they are promoting this movie - on one of my favorite blogs, Agency Spy. The list includes the limited set of Simpsons-skinned Xbox’s and 7-11 / Kwik-E-Mart mashups - hilarious. There’s even an interesting debate on whether or not the agency is the brains or the client.
So the Geico Cavemen commercials really are being spun into a TV show? A similar thought came to me when I heard that ABC had green-lighted a one-episode pilot as when I was walking through the mall this past weekend and saw an otherwise good looking man dressed in tattered camouflage shorts, a polo shirt and bright blue sneakers …. “Who told him that was ok?”
Seriously. Who asked us, the America public, if this was ok? What team decided they should take these underdeveloped characters and turn them into their own television sitcom/comedy-drama? Are we really this starved for entertainment? I’d LOVE to have been sitting in the room as the idea was pitched “you know those Geico cavemen ….. that would be a great TV show. Think of the marketing! It would be really popular with the 18-25 segment!” Geico said they were “excited to have an opportunity to do brand extension.” Note: Geico IS getting royalties for use of the characters (ca-ching). However, they did spent $403 million on ad time and space in ‘05 (source: TNS Media Intelligence) which is believed to have gone up 20% in ‘06. Maybe they just want some of their money back?
IMO, characters from commercials should stay in commercials. Dunkin’ Donuts “time to make the donuts” guy didn’t get a spin off, Aunt Jemima didn’t, and neither did the Taco Bell dog or Tony the Tiger. These are corporate mascots not TV show personalities. THAT above anything else is why it won’t work. I don’t want to see Tony the Tiger battle his anger issues, get caught in a love triangle or be stuck in awkward social situations. Sure… brands would love their commercial’s mascots to be spun into a TV show! “Free” branding! But, this one might just bite them in the bottom. This will really not be funny. And I begin to wonder how this might potentially hurt them. Will they appear greedy? If the show flops, will its negative press be tied to the Geico brand? Is any press really good press?
In these days of technology marketing, many marketers dream of going “viral.” Ahhh yes. Your video, so loved that it is sent by one person to 10, and by those 10 to 10 more … becoming a virtual phenomenon.
Anyway. This campaign is crazy (check out the ransom video). Essentially, what they did was stage a kidnapping that played out in video on their website. Two young and beautiful women (the “Two Heidies” as they were called) steal a Diesel underwear collection, kidnap the sales manager and lock themselves in a hotel room saying that they want to be “famous supermodels.”
In their demands they say that they want to be put in Diesel’s next advertising campaign and want the name ‘Diesel’ changed to ‘Heidies’ … because it’s “much younger, cooler, fresher…” They give until Friday or they will destroy the stolen underwear collection.
For the next five days, visitors to the site were encouraged to participate. One such way to get in on the action was to submit your name, which would be spelled out and placed between “the Heidies”. Users were also permitted to request things of the Heidies, such as “Have a pillow fight.” Imagine that.
The production was indeed elaborate, but it paid off for Diesel. This has to be the most innovative viral marketing campaigns that I have heard of.
I have come across two great examples recently where doing good is good business. I sense this is more than just a coincidence and is really a trend that should be monitored if not co-opted by other firms. The two things I came across are uniquely well conceived online marketing plans/ideas. So before I riff on the broader implications of the do-good trend let’s take a look at each example.
The first is from Microsoft and launched last month. It’s a new marketing plan involving their Live Messenger product. You may recall it by its previous name MSN Messenger. It is a popular and mature product that is free to use and ad supported. Many of you might not have noticed the rotating banner ads at the bottom of Live Messenger, they are easy to miss, but between pay per placement and pay per click they generate a modest profit. In a brilliant marketing move Microsoft has put a spin on the term “IM” and has created the “I’M Making a Difference” campaign. The essence of the campaign is that by choosing from one of the several worthy charities such as the Boys and Girls Club, Multiple Sclerosis Society, Sierra Club, etc and inserting a corresponding symbol at the end of your display name, Microsoft creates an ad revenue share with that charity.
So at no cost to you some of the revenue Microsoft receives for showing the ads that you are ignoring is sent to the charity you have chosen. An “i’m” symbol shows up at the end of your display name that shows that you are participating in the program. It is a brilliantly simple and well executed idea and should serve to increase users brand affinity for Live Messenger, which is a perfect complement to Microsoft chairman Bill Gates’s epic charitable efforts. The halo effect for the advertisers should not be ignored, perhaps leading down the road to higher placement fees which leads to more net dollars for everyone involved. An excellent, and rare, example of making something you are already doing help others. I encourage others who use Live Messenger (over 250 million have a version of it installed) to give it a try.
I came across the other “do good” idea a few weeks ago. The company is Green Dimes, and it has been up and running for the past six months. The company has built an internet based business model around junk mail. No, not the Viagra ads you receive in Outlook, but the junk mail you receive in your mailbox at home. They state that each year the equivalent of 100 million trees are used to create the junk mail we come home to every day and promptly throw in the trash. They act as a well connected intermediary to several “Do Not Mail” lists and let you customize which junk mail you actually want to receive. In a nice marketing twist they plant a number of trees on your behalf. Even their 1 year plan plants 12 trees. They keep a running tracker on their home page of how many trees they have saved/planted and how many pounds of junk mail they have stopped from being delivered. It’s a well conceived business that is venture backed and, to use the classic marketing phrase, “makes a great gift”. Several catalog dependent companies such as Mrs. Fields cookies have noticed a growing number of opt out requests coming from Green Dimes asking for recipients to be taken off of the company’s bulk mailing list. A note to catalog marketers to think about perhaps integrating their email and snail mail preference centers into one area.
So, do two examples of businesses doing good business by doing good make a trend? Actually, there are many more examples, some of which you may know of and I have yet to come across. So, please comment away on this post if you know more good examples.
The broader trend I see is that, increasingly, customers want to see, or will want to see, everyday companies doing their part to be good citizens. Particularly for the younger generation of consumers, this may become a requirement to prove your brand’s credibility. Old line businesses such as with British Petroleum’s “Beyond Petroleum” campaign and Charlotte-based NUCOR Steel’s “It’s our nature” website stories have been well done. However, those two firms have much to prove as far as whether their intentions lead to credible actions. So keep an eye out on your competitors, they may be more green or charitable than you. Whether they are or not, it may well be time for you to take the initiative to position your brand as a leader in this area. And you might enjoy the monetary benefits while you help everyone else enjoy the more tangible benefits of your efforts.
At Spunlogic, we have a lot of great experience and unique ideas to share. From work with clients to new approaches and trends, in this award winning blog you'll find Spunlogic experts sharing their opinions and ideas on all aspects of interactive marketing.
