Super Bowl XLII Advertising and Marketing
by Bobette Kyle

Earlier this year, I invited you to try to identify trends in Super Bowl XLII advertising and promotional methods, then think of ways you can incorporate them into your own marketing plans. Did you get a chance to do it? I did. My post-Super Bowl observations and thoughts follow.

Texting Messaging

The number one promotional trend I noticed this year was viewer interaction through text messaging. Texting is hot and text message marketing is coming into it's own over the last couple of years. This can be a win for everyone when the customer prefers to communicate this way. Some examples from Super Bowl advertisers:

Team of the Decade. (Survey sponsored by Cadillac)

Throughout Super Bowl Sunday, Fox Sports aired segments highlighting the best team from each of last five decades (1960s: Green Bay Packers, 1970s: Pittsburgh Steelers, 1980s: San Francisco 49ers, 1990s: Dallas Cowboys, and 2000s: New England Patriots). After each segment, fans were invited to vote for their favorite by sending a text message or voting online.

Call the Play. (Presented by Samsung)

This is actually an ongoing game available for most of the NFL games throughout the season (AirPlay). As you watch the game, predict the next play - players, the play, and defense -- through your cell phone or the Internet.

United Way Donations

United Way ran a fundraising spot with Tom Brady inviting viewers to text in a $5 donation. Viewers could also donate through the Website.

How can we use the concept in our own businesses? Think of activities your customers may prefer to conduct through text messaging and give them a choice. The Super Bowl advertisers gave customers the options of voting, game playing, and donating by texting. There are other approaches as well. Think about where in your own business you can apply this form of communication. Customer service? Ordering? Shipment notifications? The possibilities are limited only by your imagination.

Website Interaction

By now, integrating Websites into advertising campaigns old hat. The easy lesson here is to communicate your Website address at every opportunity. For the most part, Super Bowl advertisers did just that. A majority of the commercials invited you to visit the site or flashed a URL across the screen at some point. There were, however, a couple of twists on this old technique:

Advertising a Commercial

GoDaddy.com aired a commercial advertising another commercial. As in several recent years, the first commercial the company submitted to the network was supposedly rejected as too risqué. This year, the whole point of the commercial that actually aired was to pull people to the Website to view the "rejected" ad. Horny men, apparently, are a major purchaser of domain names.

Customer Fame

Tide-To-Go has invited us to "get famous" by creating a talking stain ad and entering it in a contest at mytalkingstain.com. The winner's ad will air during a prime time TV show.

Both the Tide and GoDaddy ads gave viewers a compelling reason to visit the companys' Websites. As a marketer, the critical result is to convert that action into increased purchasing behavior. This could happen in a variety of ways: by converting them to purchasers at the time of the visit, moving them further along in the buying process, or increasing brand awareness (i.e. increasing the chance of a future purchase). When developing your own promotional campaigns that are only tangentially related to your product, specifically address how the campaign will increase purchasing behavior in your target customers.

Branding through logo recognition.

Some advertising creates an immediate sales increase, but this isn't the only feasible advertising goal. Commercials can also be a means for long-term branding. The Under Armour Prototype commercial is an example. Notice how many times the logo shows up during the course of the ad. My guess is the primary goal of this commercial is to increase brand recognition, as Nike has done over the years. How many athletes instantly think "Nike" at the site of that checkmark logo? Almost 100%, I would imagine. The lesson here is to consider brand equity in your marketing programs. Some marketing benefits build long-term, rather than hit immediately.

So, those were my Super Bowl XLII marketing observations. Were they different from yours?