Apparently Super Bowl advertisers missed the mark in their attempt to extend their ads from the big game by using social media to give life to their brands beyond one multi-million dollar spot within the most-watched event.  I leave the diagnosis of why this effort missed the mark to 2.o guru’s like our Terry Heaton - but I find the information fascinating.

The Friday before the Super Bowl USA Today ran an article on how marketers were going all out to create an on line buzz for their brands that were being advertised in the game.  One expert was quoted as saying, “They’ve deputized an entire population via Twitter and Facebook to spread the news of these ads.”   Many of the Super Bowl advertisers offered social networking tools to breathe life into their ads beyond one 30-second blast.

Unfortunately, a survey of 1,500 consumers by Boston advertising agency Chadwick Martin Bailey showed the effort fizzled.  They followed the actions of those consumers for 24 hours following the Super Bowl and found that “few went on line despite many advertisers’ efforts to drive them to the web.”  The advertisers’ goal was to drive the viewers to go on line and chat, Tweet and become a Facebook fan.

But despite a record TV viewership of the Super Bowl, when it “came to sharing the ads with friends on line - during or after the game - only 7 percent of respondents took this action.”   The study showed that 47% of the sample was on line for scores or research during the game, but only 2 percent Tweeted about their favorite ads, and a mere 1 percent became a fan of the brand on Facebook.   The study also found that while 12% took action by visiting a Super Bowl advertiser’s web site - 67% took no action at all.

No one has explained why this web effort failed - but there may be a further clue in a study by HCD Research in New Jersey.  Their on line poll showed that scores for the top Super Bowl spots performed lower in qualities like emotion and memorability that the highest-ranked spots from 2008 and 2009.

They do feel that commercial clutter may have been a problem.  There was a record-setting 47-minutes and 50-seconds worth of ads in this year’s Super Bowl - beating the previous record by a full two minutes.  There were 66 pitches from 41 companies!

So, there you have some interesting info on attempts to send viewers to the web for value-added sizzle for the Super Bowl advertisers.  While I’m not an expert, I assume that the failure was tied to the fact that there really was no great user benefit for going to these web sites.  I watched the Super Bowl with my trusty Mac at my side - but never felt the urge to go to the web for more info on a spot.  I guess the effort in the future must be overt.  It is the same question we see from viewers who are watching/or not watching local TV news - “What return am I going to get for the invest of my time?”

Jim

This entry was posted on Monday, February 15th, 2010 at 10:19 am and is filed under Willi. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.