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I was reading an article earlier this week in ADWeek (if you haven’t read it yet check it out), and it emphasized the importance and need for an integrated strategy for brands to capitalize on their 3 million dollar investment in Super Bowl Sunday. This year’s line-up features an interesting mix of familiar faces, such as Coca Cola, Anheuser-Busch, GoDaddy, etc. and newcomers like CarMax, Salesforce.com and Groupon. And while all of these brands will compete against each other for the attention, memory and an emotional connection of the 110 million viewers on game day, the brand that best takes advantage of the pre-game and post-game opportunities will cash in on a golden opportunity.
So how can brands take advantage of their ads and measure their success? At the end of the day, an impression is still just an impression no matter what Don Draper or the folks on Madison Avenue may tell you. The answer is an integrated approach that takes advantage of social channels to extend and capitalize on the social and emotional connection people establish with the brand. (I credit Mike Fisher for coining the phrase ‘social and emotional connection,’ truly the only way I can think to describe it.) Brands have consistently tried to establish an emotional connection with the consumer, and now this finally becomes quantifiable in the social space. The evidence that brands are looking to achieve this in 2011 can be seen even before this year’s Super Bowl as numerous brands are ATTEMPTING to take advantage of social channels to spark conversation (see here, here, or even here for a few examples).
So then the question becomes, if the Super Bowl ad is only one part of the overall marketing effort (though an integral one), and brands are immersing themselves in the social channels pre and post game, can we truly leave the winner of the best Super Bowl ad to a group with ‘expert opinions’ based solely on the game day spot? As a marketing metrics nerd, I am a firm believer that the conversations surrounding a brand and the Super Bowl tell a fuller and more measurable story of who should be crowned the winner. Enter company plug of Buzz Bowl 2011 (#BuzzBowl), a non-biased Super Bowl contest to determine which brand is able to establish a social and emotional connection with the audience of Super Bowl XLV across a plethora of social media channels. Using metrics of cost per social mention (Brand Social Reach/Media Spend) and an SSEI index* a winner will be determined by all of the conversations surrounding the Super Bowl from December 1, 2010 to March 6, 2011. It’s easy to get caught up in the game day hype of one channel as you see your twitter stream blow up and are forced into an occasional intimate conversation with the fail whale. But to truly understand if a brand did or did not seize the opportunity of its Super Bowl ad you must remember that there are three essential parts to the Super Bowl success equation: pre-game preparation, in game execution, and post-game follow up.
I’m completely biased on this due to my love of one brand’s approach and efforts thus far, but in the case of full disclosure, Dorito’s is my predicted winner.
So, who do you think is primed to take advantage of their 3 million dollar investment?
*SSEI index – All positive posts/mentions get assigned a value of +1, all negative get a value of -1, all neutral = 0. Then you multiply that value by the potential reach for each conversation. Then you sum that up for all conversations for that particular brand and then divide that by the average for all brands. Finally multiply that by 100 to get a nice simple number.
[...] This post was mentioned on Twitter by Maren Batt, Brian Sprik, Matthew Bogue, Malti Shukla, Kat and others. Kat said: Can't wait to see which brands get ROI on a $3mil @SuperBowl investment? http://bit.ly/fBmfbw @khenderick on the @Alterian blog #BuzzBowl [...]
Bravo for including the HOW – as in how you’ll obtain metrics and the results – many campaigns are produced without having a clear definition or even sharing that with the public. It’s important from an industry perspective to have standards from an education standpoint, as well as an understanding. Being on the consumer team at my agency, I need to know that kind of information when sharing. It’s a crucial piece that many forget when writing case studies or blog posts.
An issue that comes up time and time again in the PR industry is how to cultivate formulas to reflect quantitative metrics and reporting for our clients. Qualitative most have down pat. Impressions tend to be the fallback because research and education isn’t present. At Fleishman-Hillard, we are lucky to have metrics formulas fleshed out, education shared frequently and reporting procedures in place.
To answer your other question – no, I don’t think that its a game day decision for who has the most pull. Traditional ad spend is a small piece of the overall social campaign, and it’s something that corporations can define quantitatively. However, it’s up to use to educate brands on other ways to measure (the social conversation you spoke about being one) and why a presence is important.
Great post – I had to read it twice to absorb it all. That’s usually a sure sign that it will make me think and want to share with our team.
Lauren
@Lauren, I agree with you completely. Understanding what metrics are important to your client and being able to educate them further on how they can make their marketing efforts more quantifiable is a huge part of success in a agency-client relationship. A big part of the partnership comes in pushing back on each to achieve a better result.
Thanks for the kind words on the post.