Integrating Broadcast and Web: The Real Story of 2008 Super Bowl Ads?

I'm going to set aside my "career advice" hat for a second and put on my "marketing thought leader" hat so that I can briefly discuss some interesting things I noticed about the Super Bowl ads.

First, GoDaddy. For a few years now, they've been posting the "hot" versions of their notorious ads on their website. While last year the message was "marketing has all the fun," this year, the message seemed to be, "the hot ads are on the web." In fact, the commercial explicitly mocked people for watching the ads on television.

So, Interesting Integration Strategy #1: Create a television ad that is basically an advertisement for the on-line ad (which happens to be on your website).

Second, Under Armour. Apparently, as their Apple-esque ad ended, if you were on their mailing list, you received an HTML email allowing you to pre-order the future of the athletic shoe. The obvious assumption is that even when watching television, people are on-line, either via their cellphone, their Blackberry, or their household PC.

Interesting Integration Strategy #2: Supplement broadcast advertisement with immediate on-line call to action.

Finally, SoBe Lifewater. When I saw the Naomi Campbell ad with all the dancing lizards, I was unimpressed. In fact, I was like, "WTF?" It seemed like someone had spent a lot of money on both Super Bowl ad time and CGI production to produce a troupe of lizards doing the "Thriller" dance. Why?

Even checking out the SoBe website didn't help, though, by producing some web-only, back-story, animations, there was at least some attempt to integrate broadcast and web advertising. Then, someone pointed out to me that a video had appeared on the web last week of people dancing to "Thriller" on the London Tube.

The strange thing is that this video actually made it onto the news (as you can see here and here. I say that's strange because it's only received a couple hundred thousand views, falling far below the 11.3 millions views clocked by the video of Filipino inmates doing the "Thriller" dance.

Now, I tend to have an overactive imagination and a soft-spot for conspiracy theories, but something seems fishy in Denmark around here. A supposedly spontaneous tube dance, which was filmed by 3 different cameras and gets almost immediate press coverage (like the same week it's posted!), and which strangely foreshadows a multi-million dollar ad? The approaching 25th anniversary of the best-selling album of all time? The artist who made said album used to be sponsored by Pepsi, which happens to own SoBe?

Coincidence? I think not

Which leads me to Interesting Integration Strategy #3: Beyond supplementing your broadcast advertising with user-generated, "viral," content, forge an alliance with another hugely successful brand (like "Michael Jackson") whose past successes are in the process of rising from the dead like zombies.

I don't know if this counts as evidence or not, but, when I first did a Google search for "Thriller & tube," the only sponsored link that showed up was from SoBe...... very interesting.

Image courtesy of dizznbonn.

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