What is YOUR Super Bowl?

Before the Big Game I was tweeting that it’s the Oscars for Advertising. Even more so in the Age of Social Media Madness, this one Sunday brings out marketing’s biggest and brightest.

Ad Watching, Spectator Sport

Everyone has their favorites, lists of the best and worst of the nights ads, what when right and what went wrong.

  • Budweiser goes big with classic sentiment, edges Tide with baby Clydesdale Hope in USA Today’s Ad Meter.
  • Audi makes a prom date, NFP drafts Leon Sandcastle while GoDaddy fails Branding 101.
  • Loved the fun “Seniors” spot, but Taco Bell did fumble on the social side. Had the team had a better grasp of ‘social’ and been ready for fan engagement on Twitter, Facebook, coulda been much more for the brand.

Expect the Unexpected
someecards.com - I could see you playing in the Super Bowl if the entire game was mulling around trying to look busy during a power outage.

You have to make the most of that $4 million ad buy when you’re going after a Big Game spot. It’s a linchpin of your entire marketing, promotion, branding, hell communications plan. It’s cornerstone – you can’t ‘set and forget’ anything, can’t silo it as ‘advertising’ or treat social and PR as afterthoughts.

Granted they had one ad that aired, but it was a Tweet Heard ‘Round the World that got everyone talking about Oreo. It’s 2013 and it’s all about real time, about planning and being ready for anything. They had the war room staffed, leadership ready to make decisions – that is how Oreo pulled off Twitter Marketing Gold during the power outage.

Think Smart, Not Small

Most companies can’t dream of a Big Sunday spot but they sure as hell can learn from the big dogs.

Power fail aside, this huge event all came together. Why? Preparation. Watch any of the behind the scenes specials, you’ll see an army of folks working their asses off. Next year’s game and next year’s ads – yeah, they’re already on that.

Planning is my schtick lately – mostly because it’s impossible to do good work for companies that don’t, brands that confuse tactics with strategy, leaders who think you can just wing it. You’re leading your business, so lead.

Is it an event? A major email marketing program, linked to CRM? Are you stepping up your social and inbound? Major media push, integrating paid and earned media? You’re putting all your eggs and budget in that basket – have you talked to HR, are employees all on message? Made sure the call center is ready? How good are your servers, ready to handle up-spike in traffic? If you’re splashing social icons and hashtags on everything you share, are human people on the other end of the line?!

If you don’t know the answers to those questions and gazillion more, then your webinar will be a total flop. If you didn’t already bring in Marketing and PR, HR and Social, R&D and Finance all in the same room six months ago to strategize Your Big Game, then let me tell you the score: You Lose.

What is YOUR Super Bowl? And more importantly, are you READY for it?

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10 thoughts on “What is YOUR Super Bowl?”

  1. Hey Davina,

    Oscars for Advertising about sums it up. You didn’t like that GoDaddy kiss? 😉 The slurping sound heard ’round the world was almost too much to take, huh?

    The Oreo story is very cool though. Talk about the team doing something that is bang-on. Yes, the war room was indeed standing by and ready to roll fo sho. Olivier Blanchard wrote a nice post about that one … they basically had the “A-Team” at the ready.
    Craig McBreen recently posted..Why a Clearly Defined Purpose is a Must (#2 in a Series)

    1. Gonna have to read that post b/c yeah, A-team! Ready! is the point.

      I’ve had to argue the need for me to be (paid) at events, interviews. I’ve missed big event b/c client waited, gave me the date weeks before and I was otherwise booked. You’re putting big $$ in this critical trade show or whatever.. all hands on deck should be no-brainer.

  2. Davina, when I met farmer Fred Flemming a few days ago, he couldn’t stop talking about the Dodge ad with Paul Harvey. The gang at Wieden+Kennedy really hit a home run in the Ag community. I think that spot will resonate with a lot of people for a long, long time.

    My own personal super bowl? It’s every time I meet someone whose work I respect!
    Barrett Rossie recently posted..A Marketing Lesson From Farmer Fred

    1. Nice. That ad was similar to a vid done for a Farms org, right sentiment and patriotic theme for that target market. Funny so many think of it as ‘just’ advertising and forget the rest, how important it is to the brand, reputation, market value and much more. Like do Apple and Coke really ‘need’ to buy so many ads, would we really forget.. or is there something more to it? FWIW.

    1. Was talking w/ people the other day about the Old Spice YT event and how much luck – timing, nothing happening in the news cycle, general mood of consumers – played into that. But only b/c they were ready to capitalize on it – takes an extraordinary amount of work to do it.

      For me a starring guest post or conference appearance, that could be a Super Bowl moment – that make or break it chance. Here’s to making more moments like that, and making them count. FWIW.

  4. I think it was Vince Lombardi that said that ‘luck’ is where opportunity meets preparation. Oreo was ready to act when the power went out, and they got a ton of positive PR out of one tweet.

    On the other hand, Dodge’s ‘God Made a Farmer’ commercial was widely viewed as the hit of the Super Bowl ads, yet Dodge didn’t even tweet out a link to the commercial until two days later.

    Luck favors the prepared 😉
    Mack Collier recently posted..What Comes After Social Media?

    1. Well that’s just it isn’t it? There aren’t overnight successes really, people don’t rarely shoot – and stay – up to the top instantly do they. It’s work, preparation – we have to make our own luck. No if only I knew how. 😉

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