My New York Giants are in the Super Bowl. They’ll be playing Sunday against the New England Patriots; the team I loathe the most. I’ll be in Florida at the iMedia Marketers Summit. And yes, while I’ll be tuning in to watch the game…to root for my Giants, I’ll be tuning in as much, if not more for the ads.  The stage that is the Super Bowl is a marketer’s dream. Your idea, your creative, your hard work is on display for all the world to see.  Creative Directors get geeked out on the idea of having a Super Bowl ad to include in their “reel.” That’s how this business works. We’re all about ego. Me included. Over the years, I’ve had the chance to work on two spots that made it to the Super Bowl. They were proud moments.

As a marketer, it’s been interesting to watch Super Bowl ads evolve into Super Bowl campaigns. Campaign, you might ask? Sure. We have seen the Super Bowl “ad” morph into an ad that has a web site dedicated to the campaign, paid search (if you’re a smart company) to help people find your ad, pre-launching/seeding of the ad ahead of the Super Bow, the solicitation of customer feedback, the gaming of the USA Today Ad Meter and oh so much more. As technology has evolved and user behavior changed (eg 3 screens) advertisers have swung, hit and missed. Last year, I wrote a post titled, “10 Mistakes 2011 Super Bowl Advertisers Will Make” and in looking at it this morning, I think advertisers are destined to make at least 5 of them. Which 5? Glad you asked:

1. The call to action (URL, SMS, etc.) will be too small and come at the end of the ad
2. Paid search to drive people, interested in the ad or who remember the ad, won’t be bought
3. There will be too much emphasis on Facebook
4. Mobile optimized sites will be forgotten…instead Flash heavy experiences will be used
5. Proper load balancing for their hosting environment won’t be implemented – this will mean someone’s site will go down and people wanting to get an offer won’t be able to

Our consumers have gotten smarter, but have the advertisers?  This year should be an interesting test for marketers. We’ll have a combination of elements converging to make for one heck of a cocktail. Real time social media monitoring will be used to gauge consumer feedback, mobile will become a big player, monetizing across 3 screens will be critical, and oh so much more.  The Super Bowl places your work under a microscope.  Consumers, analysts, pundits, your own employees and more provide their often unsolicited thoughts, opinions and feedback.  When you spend $3M for just the air time, it’s too be expected.

The question I often ask is why do marketers use the Super Bowl as a lab? Sure, you could have done consumer concept testing beforehand, but when you invest nearly 5M (airtime and production) for 1 day, that work better be top notch and deliver.  In 2010, I think Google really hit the nail on the head and showed how to rethink the concept of Super Bowl Advertising.  They ran a spot called “Parisian Love.”

That spot wasn’t a new spot. In fact it had been out in the wild on the web for several months. Google created several of these videos and ran the best performing one on the biggest stage. Now, that’s smart…use data and insights to determine which commercial to run.  Why aren’t we using more data driven insights?  Why are we still saving our “best” for the Super Bowl instead of giving our “best” throughout the year? It’s a fair question when you consider how much data is readily available for us, as marketers, to leverage.

I’m hoping this is the year Super Bowl advertising evolves…grows up…and becomes something more than than a stage for ego driven Creative Directors and Chief Marketing Officers to demonstrate they know how to spend lots of money really fast.

If you’re a frequent Mad Men watcher, I wonder if you’ve started to notice the strange phenomenon I’m noticing.  The ads, you know those “annoying” commercials, are getting a hell of a lot better.  When Mad Men first launched the commercials were your run of the mill, everyday ads.  In short, they were boring, expected and lacking soul. Even the BMW ads (and you know I’m a huge BMW fan) were nothing to tune in for.  But, as Mad Men has taken off we’re seeing advertisers up their game.  The content in Mad Men is so good, advertisers are having to make their ads better.

This is a win-win for the user.  Commercials are simply part of a TV viewing experience.  Yes, even if you have Tivo, they are part of the experience, because you have to skip them.  But, when the ads become enjoyable, entertaining, riveting and immersive, the user almost doesn’t mind watching them…almost.

Not unlike TV Shows mailing it in for an entire quarter, until just before sweeps week or an awards cut-off date, we’ve grown accustomed to ads being horrendous all year, until the Super Bowl.  That’s the one time when marketers and advertisers and clients and agencies come together to create ads that are interesting, emotional, fun and more importantly, worth hunting for on USA Today or YouTube, to watch again.  I’ve long lamented that marketers and advertisers should treat every day like it was the Super Bowl, bring their A game and never mail it in.  But, let’s be honest, that just doesn’t happen with the exception of a few brands (eg Nike and Apple).  It’s fun to see marketers and advertisers alike acting like Jr. Art Directors fawning for the approval of Don Draper.

Am I the only one noticing this?

So Super Bowl XLIII has come and gone. Congratulations Steelers on winning. As much as I enjoyed the game, let’s be honest, I was watching it for the ads. I tried something new this year. I actually didn’t want the game in real time. Instead I opted to TIVO the game, but watch and read the stream of tweets from the people I follow on Twitter. The experience was amazing. By the time the game was over and I started watching the game on delay I could nearly contain my excitement.

I’m not going to dissect every commercial. People like Steve Hall at Adrants do a much better job than I ever could at doing that.  You can see every one of the commercials here,here or here.  I though NBC did a great job of continually reminding viewers they could see the ads and vote on them at Hulu.

A few notes I want to make before I get into the ads:

1. Once again advertisers missed the point.  Most (not all) did not leave enough time in their commercials for viewers to see what they should do next.  Some didn’t even include a URL.  That would have been passable if advertisers had invested in paid search.  Nearly every single advertiser elected not to invest in paid search.  That’s a complete oversight and massive mistake in today’s Google dominated world.  Major exceptions to this were Cheetos, Hyundai, and GoDaddy.
2. 3D is big.  Well, people are trying to make it big.  From NBC house ads promoting that the next episode of Chuck would be broadcast in 3D to Sobe running a 3D commercial, it seems like 3D is the next big thing of the day.  Makes me really happy that the team at Colle+McVoy was ahead of the curve when we launched Snowdin last year.
3. I’m amazed the no one took advantage of owning the official Super Bowl web site.  It just seemed like a no brainer to me.  Cadillac had some presence as did a few other advertisers, but on the whole no one decided to make a splash.
4. Brands/companies clearly were not prepared for the surge of traffic to their web sites.  Several sites were down or slow to load.  Hyundai and Denny’s were the worst for me.
5. We are still feeling the effects of the Janet Jackson Super Bowl situation 5 years ago.  Last year we had a safe choice in Tom Petty.  Before that it was Prince, The Rolling Stones, and Paul McCartney.  I love The Boss, but it would be nice to see a more ahem youthful and progressive act.  Give me Coldplay or The Killers.

With that out of the way, let’s cover some of the ads:

Teleflora

This was the ad that made me rewind and watch it again about 6 times.  To call the copywriting edgy would be an understatement.  Just watch and enjoy.

Hyundai

Wow, I’m impressed. This brand has come a long way. When the Hyundai Genesis first came on the scene I took some notice. I even considered it as a new car, but I never test drove it. After seeing the ads for the Genesis Coupe I’m ready to test drive. That’s an ad that worked. There presence throughout the game was great. Hyundai ran a few different ads, with my favorite one being this one:

Go Daddy

Of all the advertisers they had the best connection to web. Just watch how long they hold the final frame. They give you more than enough time to read the URL and place it into memory. The call to action is fantastic and fits perfectly into their brand identity.

Bridgestone

This is probably my favorite ad of the entire Super Bowl. I have Bridgestone tires and love the brand. In full disclosure I also have several Mr. and Mrs. Potato Head characters at my desk. So it’s possible I’m biased. However, I just happen to think Bridgestone does a great job of delivering the product benefit (eg stopping power) in a manner that sticks out and is memorable.

E*Trade

While the ads themselves were ok, what really caught my eye is how well E*Trade integrated the web. For starters the main message on their home page was a call to action to view their Super Bowl ads. Thank you for not making me hunt the web to find it. They also launched a Facebook Fan Page for the E*Trade Baby just before the Super Bowl. On the page you could watch the baby ads in HD quality. Very cool.

Coke

The Avatar commercial was funny especially when you consider how many people have them on their plethora of social networking and community sites; like Twitter. I checked out 2nd Life because it seemed like such a logical tie in for the ad, but alas nothing there. Kinda bummed me out.

Doritos

Doritos had a few ads in the Super Bowl. The first one that ran was very Bud Light feeling. The toilet humor just didn’t seem true to the Doritos brand.

On the other hand, the 2nd spot called the Power of Crunch was very cool and very Doritos.

Bud Light

Yes, the ad is very Bud Light, but I just feel like it’s in poor taste given the current economic climate. Something about throwing a guy out the window for offering up a way to cut costs just seems wrong.

Audi
I’m split. This commercial is much better than last year’s Godfather rip off. I love the integration of Jason Statham. He’s a perfectly casted fit for the ad. But, just like last year it takes too long for the payoff. Also, there was NO URL insertion of call to action. Just strange.

Pepsi

Sigh. Where to start. Well, the first thing to say is, Pepsi, please stop glomming on to Obama. From the logo to the ad campaign for Refresh Everything has been Obama-centric. This ad could have been awesome. But, the payoff takes too long. It’s not till you get to the final few seconds that you realize it’s a Pepsi commercial. That’s a lot of money to spend for such little branding. Maybe they thought the inclusion of Will I. Am (the huge Obama supporter) was helping build the brand by conjuring up memories of Obama’s campaign. I love the remix of the Dylan song and wish they made it available for purchase/download.

The Brand Formally Known As Gatorade

What are they doing with this brand? You are killing years and years of brand awareness and equity. Seriously, you are calling the brand “G.” I’m not making this up. The change is so dramatic they are running Super Bowl ads that help explain what “G” is. I’ve watched the ads and I still don’t know “G” is.

Denny’s

Question: What happens when a poor creative concept meets a great message? Answer: You get a mediocre ad. For a good portion of this ad I thought it was for Reddi-Wip. The message though is awesome. They are giving EVERYONE a free Grand Slam. That’s gonna drive a lot of foot traffic to the store. If the breakfast experience delivers it’s a huge win. If it underwhelms this ad was like throwing gas on a fire.

MadMen is a show on AMC that’s centered around the advertising agency business. As AMC puts it, MadMen is “Set in 1960s New York, the sexy, stylized and provocative AMC drama Mad Men follows the lives of the ruthlessly competitive men and women of Madison Avenue advertising, an ego-driven world where key players make an art of the sell.” It’s a good show, a really great show. Here is a clip from Season 1.

Unfortunately, it seems like majority of companies are still buying advertising space based on demographics. Company X, which for the purposes of this argument is BMW, will buy space on show Y, which for the purposes of this conversation is MadMen, because people between the ages of A and B who make somewhere between M and R watch the show. If we assume that’s who’s watching the show, we wouldn’t take into account that a large portion of the viewing audience are advertising people. You know, people who work at agencies

If my hypothesis is correct and agency people are a big part of the audience, wouldn’t companies, like BMW raise the bar on the creative? Running the same creative they run on every other channel seems silly to me because the viewing audience is much more sophisticated. I’ve been taking note of the ads that are running during the episodes and assigning them letter grades from A – F. The average letter grade is a D. I also casually looked at the critical reviews of the ads that had reviews available, and the pundits seem to agree with me.

Aren’t these just wasted dollars? Why aren’t we being smarter about the ads we create? Shouldn’t we consider the audience we’re speaking to, the show we’re running on, and may other factors when creating ads. Well, I do. MadMen is the perfect test kitchen for ads. Where else can companies get free feedback from other agencies about their work?

C’mon people, we can be better. We can be smarter. We can make this work. We just need to think things out a little bit more.