A DIFFERENT TYPE OF AGENCY

As a collective, The Factory Interactive is fueled by a passion for developing enduring messages conceived through a marriage of design and technology. At the core, we are explorers of possibility and architects of memory. We create rich immersive experiences that increase message retention and reward the audience. Our mission: give personality to products, resulting in a stronger, more effective brand.

_{February 3, 2009}
Super Bowl XLIII Ads fail to deliver social media ROI _{By jason}

I don’t think I’m alone in saying that this years Super Bowl ads were a bit of a yawn. In fact Ad Age’s own ad critic Bob Garfield was left more or less unimpressed. At a cost of $100,000 a second over 33 advertisers forked over a hefty fistful of cash for the opportunity to reach an audience of approximately 90 million Americans.  You would think the opportunity to reach an audience of this size in these tough economic times would have given birth to some stellar creativity, alas this was not the case.

A couple of the super bowl heavyweights were noticeably absent including FedEx and GM and more would have surely canceled if they hadn’t purchased their media ahead of the fall financial meltdown.

That being said here is the run down. The Doritos (crowd sourced) ad was worth a chuckle, as was the Monster.com and NBC (LMAO) bumper. However heavy hitters like Coke and Budweiser seemed to miss the mark. Both brands recycled ideas from the past and seemed to have lost touch with the true pulse of popular culture.

Here is the Dorito’s Spot.

Super Bowl ad virgins Denny’s (yes Denny’s) and Teleflora both tried humor in their campaigns, with varying success. Denny’s gave a nod to the sopranos with a quirky spot with the punch line “isn’t it time you had a serious breakfast”. This was followed by the claim that they plan on giving away a free Grand Slam to everyone in America on Tuesday, February 3rd. How they plan on actually doing this is one of God’s little mysteries. I guess they are banking on no-one taking them up on the offer. After all when was the last time you ate at Denny’s ?

Here is the Denny’s Spot.

The Teleflora ad was simply terrible. Somehow they thought that by insulting a homely office girl this spot would translate into men purchasing their hand delivered flowers for their significant others. Got to love the line, “go home to your romance novels and your fat smelly cat”.  Really, Teleflora !….wow that’s just shameful.

Here is the Teleflora Spot.

Of-course what would the Super Bowl be without the sexually gratuitous Godaddy. The online domain name retailer has continually offered up titillating Super Bowl eye candy since 2005.  This year they featured two ads. The first had Danica Patrick taking a shower with a nondescript blonde as three college students watched on their computer. The second was a familiar parody (and recurring theme) of a congressional hearing. This time the the controversy surrounded baseball and the question of ‘enhancements’.  Apparently both ads were created in-house by Go Daddy Productions.

Here is the Go daddy spot.

While this is no Club Jenna clip (thanks again Comcast), it definitely uses sex as the main theme for an otherwise uninteresting, recycled spot. What this has to do with buying a domain name is beyond me but hey it’s consistently resulted in traffic to the site, so why fix it if it’s not broken.

However nothing could come close to the bizarre, depressing and creatively barren, Cash4Gold spot featuring Ed McMahon & McHammer (I guess Gary Colman was busy). This ad would be a full, steaming pile of crap at 2 am on the DIY channel much less during the most watch television program in the country.  I can’t truly find the words to express how awful this spot is, so just take a look at the video link below to see for yourself.

finally the Cash4Gold spot

All of this got me to thinking – what effect does the Super Bowl have on online search trends and how are brands measuring their ROI from the Super Bowl. I took at look at the Google zeitgeist and was surprised to find the following.

Lets start by taking a look at the screen shot below of Google trends form 11 am Monday morning.

• Not one brand or advertiser was listed in the TOP 10 Google trend searches that morning.
• The most searched for advertiser of the 33 brands was Godaddy.
• and the most interesting fact: Comcast’s super bowl porn mishap made it twice into the top 25 searches.

That’s right folks – surprise, surprise shower scenes and misplaced (or so they claim) hardcore porn, has topped the list of most Super Bowl related searches. In case you missed the news story about Comcast broadcasting, hardcore porn to all its viewers in Arizona, I’ve included the story here. I’ve also included a link to the VERY NSFW actually broadcast. WARNING – this is hardcore porn and you will see full frontal man junk – You have been warned but what they hell you’re going to click this link anyway. -

Bob Garfield states that the Cash4Gold spot should have the largest ROI but I respectfully disagree. I think in terms of measurable ROI, Go daddy is the clear winner, the zeitgeist numbers speak for themselves.

Not one other advertiser made it into the top 10 search terms the following morning and of the 33 brands only 2 others created a blip on the Google trends radar.  As we measure the effectiveness of advertising in today’s convergent media world we need to be tracking more than Neilsen ratings.

None of the 33 advertisers made a dent in the larger world of social media or search trends. I am almost certain (I say almost because I haven’t finished crunching the data yet) that none generated as much traffic to their website as the Godaddy spot. Since we know that Super Bowl ads do not result in short term sales how are these brands measuring the success of these spots ? Why spend $3,000,000 in 30 seconds when it’s clear that for most they missed a huge opportunity to convert that passive audience into active consumers. How is it possible that so many of these brands missed the opportunity to convert their TV audience into online consumers.

We know what these spots failed to dominate the online conversation however the verdict is still out as to whether or not they will dominate our water cooler conversations  ? I wonder who is measuing that statistic.

Filed under: Media News,SEO — Tags: ads, commercials, Google Trends, SEO, social capital, social media, super bowl — @ 11:03 am

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