Super Bowl advertising meets social media

Despite being a rabid sports fan, I look forward to the Super Bowl for a different reason: the commercials. In years past, I would tape the game, and then rapidly fast-forward through the action to the commercials, which I would grade, denoting the select few I thought were outstanding.

This year, for the first time in many years, I did not tape the game (even though the Giants played and won)  because all the commercials are available on the Internet and I can watch them over and over at my leisure. Their presence and the power of social media, however, raised an interesting conundrum for the advertisers: How do you make them memorable online as well as on television? More importantly, given the power of social media and immediate online sentiment, how do you ensure that your commercial will not be deemed offensive?

The price of a 30 second commercial in this year”™s Super Bowl ranged from $3.5 to $4.0 million depending on the time slot. That”™s a lot of money for the airing of one commercial which could have cost more than $1 million to produce. While the purpose of some of these commercials is to generate immediate sales, the main purpose is branding and brand recognition.

With over 800 million potential viewers on Facebook, hundreds of millions of tweets daily, likes and dislikes, circles of influence and many blogs and websites, the potential for a disastrous reaction to a Super Bowl commercial looms large. Advertisers who spend enormous amounts of money on brand recognition do not want to have to devote significant money, time and energy to reputation management.

For this reason, an increasing number of companies either used or expanded their use of focus groups for the first time this year. While it is impossible to consider every aspect or implication of a commercial, this extensive testing was designed to reduce the odds that a commercial would be perceived as offensive. Several commercials were modified as a result.

Last year, Groupon, the coupon service, was severely chastised on Twitter for exploiting Tibet in a commercial intended to be humorous. Almost 50% of the viewers rated it as completely inappropriate — which had an immediate effect on Groupon”™s sales and sentiment. Groupon subsequently admitted that it did not use any focus groups to test the commercial.

During this year”™s Super Bowl, two Twitter statistics were particularly revealing:

• In the final three minutes of the game, there were 10,000 tweets per second or 1.8 million tweets.
• During Madonna”™s halftime show, over a five-minute period, there was an average of 8,000 tweets per second or 2.4 million tweets.

These numbers are amazing, especially considering that they span a very short period of time. Imagine what they are like over a period of several days or even a week.  In fact, Twitter is raising the stakes.“This year we”™re introducing a Twitter twist,” the company said. “Immediately after the game, you can replay all of the ads that aired during the game and Tweet votes for your favorites on adscrimmage.twitter.com.” It will be interesting to read Twitter”™s announcement of the winning advertisement ”“ and some of the conversations — on February 12.

It”™s somewhat scary to realize that these millions of tweets emanated from just one site. When you include Facebook, YouTube, Hulu and many other sites and blogs, you begin to get an idea of the reach of social media and potential reward and danger for these advertisements.  The outrageous price of a 30 second commercial might be worthwhile since companies can reach a large audience who, if they like the advertisement, will generate many conversations and a tremendous amount of buzz ”“ particularly if it goes viral as the Volkswagen Passat ad did last year with 49.4 million views on YouTube.  But this sword is double-edged. A negative reaction, particularly if people find an ad offensive, can have dire consequences that can grow exponentially overnight and require vast resources for emergency reputation management. It can also hurt sales.

Personally, I found most of the commercials this year to be quite safe; imaginative, but with little risk of eliciting strong negative reactions.  However, since this is the Super Bowl, invariably there must be some controversy.  This year”™s award goes to Teleflora.com with the seductive model Adriana Lima who explains to male viewers that “If they give, then they shall receive.” Teleflora.com is already battling accusations of sexism. (Go Daddy probably would have won this award had it aired its Internet commercial instead of the “edited” Super Bowl advertisement. Nevertheless, according to Brand Bowl”™s analysis of Tweets, Go Daddy still earned the highest number of negative tweets of any advertisement.)

Before the Internet, the biggest day for advertisers was Super Bowl Sunday. While that hasn”™t changed, when it comes to measuring the impact of advertising, because of social media, prime time is the week that follows the Super Bowl.

Bruce Newman is the vice president at The Productivity Institute L.L.C. in Carmel. He is also a social media strategist and the designer of a new service, wwWebevents.com. Follow him on LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook and the Productivity Institute blog. Bruce can be reached at bnewman@prodinst.com.