Charles Armstrong

Is 2.7mm for a 30 second TV spot enough to force marketers to align their campaigns with the on-line channel?

What do search marketers do when they are not that interested in the game? Well… quite a few of us were burning up Twitter discussing the off-line / on-line tie-in of the 2008 Super Bowl Ads. (sic)

Tide was the clear winner in the 2008 Super Bowl internet-marketing arena. Tide led the way with promotion that brilliantly tied together on-line & off-line marketing. The Tide made sure all the pieces were in-place and executed the “my talking stain” promotion flawlessly. “My talking stain” was a clever spot with prominent URL and a clear call to action at the end, directing viewers to my talkingstain.com
Although they appeared to need, more bandwidth shortly after the commercial first aired… The site is easy to find with top rankings in organic and paid search. Once on the site visitors are greeted with a huge amount of interactive content: watch the video, make your own stain ad, win prizes, download the ad, etc.
Does P&G know about social media… You bet! They had both a FaceBook and MySpace pages setup for mytalkingstain. Video sites were also covered with both YouTube and AOL.Video
NUMBER OF SPOTS: One spot
PLACEMENT: Second quarter
DETAILS: The spot will feature P&G’s Tide-to-Go instant stain remover. It is the first-ever Super Bowl appearance for Tide.
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- Well done P&G!

Audi – TruthInEngeneering.com great add… awesome website. Audi did a great job of getting this Flash only website well ranked organically before the big game… However, Audi was nowhere to be seen in PPC… they get scooped by Cadillac in PPC for “truth in engineering”
NUMBER OF SPOTS: One 60-second spot
PLACEMENT: First quarter
DETAILS: Audi’s first appearance in the game in two decades will be used to promote the R8 sports car. The spot will be based on the Godfather film series.

Career Builder spent huge budget on PPC for “super bowl” but left the door wide open and got drafted by Monster.com for “follow your heart”… Career Builder did not even bid on the title of their own spot (and the commercial was just creepy)
NUMBER OF SPOTS: Two spots
PLACEMENT: One in the second quarter and one in the third quarter
DETAILS: According the Advertising Age, the spot will feature “spider attacks, a raging heart, an unusual rescue, self-intervention, (and) an overbearing boss” in an attempt to motivate disgruntled workers to finally find a new job.

The PPC staff for Bridgestonetire.com at Bridgestone had their thinking caps on… Bidding on both “Richard Simmons” and “Alice Cooper” for their Super Bowl ad. They also had the top spot throughout the night with “super bowl ads” (why not bid on “deer” too?)
NUMBER OF SPOTS: Two 30-second spots
PLACEMENT: Between the first and second quarters and during the third quarter
DETAILS: One titled “Scream” will feature how Bridgestone tires can keep motorists from turning squirrels into road kill. The second spot (“Unexpected Obstacles”) will feature Richard Simmons, Alice Cooper and a deer.

Cars.com ads were uninspiring with no call to action and the site suffered technical issues throughout the Super Bowl.
NUMBER OF SPOTS: Two 30-second spots
PLACEMENT: First quarter and third quarter
DETAILS: Ads will demonstrate the value of Cars.com information by showing misinformed auto buyers contending with car dealers

While many of the other ads were good, their on-line presence was dismal or non-existent. It is simply amazing to me the amount of money companies are willing to spend in 2008 to attract potential customers off-line, with limited to no on-line opportunity to engage them. Repeat after me… Flashing your brands URL in small print is not enough! Additionally, while doing the research for this post, I was surprised at the number of major brands that do not own their social media profiles. Several searches on MySpace, FaceBook, & YouTube found squatters misrepresenting brands.

It will be interesting to see where we are with off-line/on-line media around this time in 2009.

(Btw – e-trade… YouTube quality videos belong on YouTube. Not on my HDTV.)