Engagement and SB XLII Ads

Think back about the game.  Do you remember any of the ads - without any aided recall?  Did any of them really "engage" you?

For $3 million, I was curious about how engaging the ads would be.  I do marketing/advertising research for a living which means my perspective is biased.

To refresh your memory, going back almost two years:  "Engagement is turning on a prospect to a brand idea enhanced by the surrounding context."  Thus spoke the ARF.  I'd extend that definition because it could be as simple as "they liked our ad."  I say engagement means that people did something after watching.

Well, these days the easiest next step would be for consumers to find out more online.  So I was looking for ads that sent people to the web to find out more - and not just looking for the ads on myspace.

OK so were any of these ads really "engaging"?

As expected, the only one that did with any effectiveness was GoDaddy.com.  The trick wasn't the suggestive humor - it was their URL displayed on screen for the entire spot.  (I spoke with their PR director last month in Vegas who said this is a recognized value-creating tactic.)

I can vaguely remember some other vanity URLs:

• A talking stain during an interview.
• Sunsilk - something with music, nothing to do with shampoo.
• Doritos using snackstrongproductions.com again (remember I'm biased)
• Sobe had one, but I just remember Thriller.

I also remember some of the other advertisers - Bridgestone, Audi, Coca-Cola, Victoria's Secret, FedEx, Gatorade, and salesgenie.com (their URL was ../tv I think).  But if they had vanity URLs, I can't remember them.  (were there any others?)

Keep in mind that I'm biased, in the industry, and trying to keep the addresses in mind.  Blame the memory, I suppose.

Pew's latest survey shows over 73% of adults have internet access.  Forrester data shows 72%.  Of course we could go to myspace and look at all the ads.  But isn't the point of engagement to say something that a viewer will remember - and then do something about?  Seems like most advertisers did as well here as the Patriots' offensive line.

Comments

[jay]

Maybe it was the shock of watching the Patriots play like it was a meaning less preseason game but I can hardly remember any of the ads from this years superbowl. And I was paying attention. Maybe it's because the air time is so expensive they just don't have the budget left to come up with a good concept. Next year you'll see a thirty second spot with only a logo + url in the center of the screen.

The biggest dud I thought was the Chevy Tahoe Hybrid commercial. Everyone at my party thought it was Fidelity or some financial company ad. It had nothing to do with the SUV.

Under Armour's ad was supposed to be focused on it's new footwear line but you only saw glimpses of them and the rest of the ad was pretty standard under armour jock mentality.

BTW - it's become a nice yearly tradition to check out your post superbowl ad rundown.

[Peter Kim]

Yeah, I paid a lot more attention to the ads for the past couple of years, mostly because I didn't care about who won.

You've made me think about what's been missing - good 'ol storytelling. Whatever happened to leaving people wanting more? These advertisers are so desperate to spit it all out in 30" that it ends up as brand Cliff Notes. How about this instead:

Act I: 30" spot, send to website
Act II: Online experience, send to store
Act III: In store, buy and use product

[jay]

Totally. These brands should be focusing on extending the relationship with it's customers beyond the 30 second spot.

Every major marketing campaign I am a part of at least one person says let's just put the commercial on the web site and add the products next to it. People still don't get that your website is your companies (ok, maybe not all companies) best voice. Speak loud tell your full story and build your brand. Then drive them to a sale!

[Miguel C.]

We just posted our 4th annual study of how well super bowl advertisers integrated online and offline advertising - we'll be writing more about this on our blog, but the preliminary findings are already up on our site: www.reprisemedia.com/scorecard.aspx.