| medialifemagazine.com Sports TV
A number of big-game advertisers, including the NFL and Frito-Lay, are asking viewers to help choose their spots on their sites before the game, while others, such as Pepsi and GoDaddy.com, direct viewers to their web sites as a continuation of the commercial’s creative. Combined with the surge in dot.com companies advertising in this year’s game, like Cars.com and SalesGenie.com, Sunday’s game on Fox could be the most wired Super Bowl ever. “A big trend I’m seeing is the interaction between the TV spot and the web site,” says Bill McKendry, founder and chief creative officer for Hanon McKendry/The Brand Consultants in Grand Rapids, Mich. Many companies are using the web to build anticipation for the Super Bowl ads weeks before the game. The NFL, which had a UGC ad last year, this year posted videos on NFL.com of more than three dozen players explaining how they got into football. Fans voted on their favorite, and the winner will be shown as Sunday’s game ad. Frito-Lay also used an online vote to determine the content of its 60-second spot. The company solicited entries for the best original song, which did not have to be related to the chip company’s product. After winnowing the field to 10 semifinalists, Frito-Lay put their songs online and opened them to a vote, the winner of which will air during the game. “Now you’re seeing more and more stuff happening online as opposed to a few years ago. It was hard to find any information [about the ads before the game] when I started my site,” says Ken Phipps, who has run superbowl-ads.com the past 10 years. “Now they’re fully embracing the web.” Other advertisers will build on their TV spots via new media devices. Anheuser-Busch, whose humorous Bud Light spots usually dominate the day-after commercial opinion polls, is offering a so-called secret spot that viewers can sign up to watch via their mobile phones by registering their cell numbers on one of three Budweiser sites. The beer company did a similar program last year with very little promotion but this year has been blitzing the idea with ads on a number of sites. Pepsi is launching a new online music promotion with its ad, for which it recruited pop star Justin Timberlake. The commercial will direct viewers to the new site PepsiStuff.com. And then of course there is GoDaddy, the company that annually produces a racy spot shot down by network sponsors that, in the process, garners loads of publicity. This year the spot that Fox approved will direct viewers to the GoDaddy web site to watch one of the roughly half a dozen spots that were rejected. Unlike UGC, which lasted just one year, interactive spots should be a trend that sticks around. “Advertisers are trying to involve consumers with their brands and campaigns, with advertisers retaining control of the ads,” says Tim Calkins, Clinical Professor of Marketing at Northwestern University’s Kellogg School of management. Advertisers who succeed in engaging viewers can reap a tremendous benefit. Nielsen Online estimates that web traffic for last year’s Super Bowl advertisers saw a collective 50 percent increase the day after the game, from 8.5 million unique visitors on Super Bowl Sunday to 12.7 million the next day. Anheuser-Busch claims that 30 million people viewed its ads online in the weeks after last year’s game, and that could rise this year. In addition to replays being available on YouTube, AOL and other sites, Super Bowl ads will get a huge boost from a new online venue. MySpace, a News Corp. sibling of game carrier Fox, has set up a Super Bowl ad page that links to each advertiser and will offer on-demand replays of every ad. The network plans to advertise the site during the game. © 2012 Media Life |
