The Super Bowl is known to be an event that features not only the year's best in professional football, but also the year's best in television advertising.
Many football fans and non-football-fans alike watch the Super Bowl for the sake of seeing the commercials just as much as - or more than - for the sake of watching the actual football game. And this year, I don't think those viewers were disappointed. Most of the commercials were very well done; many were funny; a few were slightly disturbing. And the football game was exciting, too.
But what impressed me most about Super Bowl XLIV was the number of brands that integrated their television commercials with free bonus content on the Web.
Several companies allowed web users to see "sneak peeks" of their Super Bowl spots during the week before the game. Many of these offers tied into a reciprocity technique - after watching the short clip, users were encouraged to follow the brand on Twitter, or to use a promotional code to receive a discount at the brand's online store. And after the game, some brands then emailed links for the full versions of their ads to users who opted in to their mailing list.
Also this year, all of the Super Bowl commercials were made publicly available to users after the spots aired during the game. Viewers can watch all 71 commercials at www.youtube.com/adblitz, and between now and February 14, can vote for their favorite.
Of these Web-integrated Super Bowl campaigns, my personal favorite is the HomeAway ad:
This ad is actually a trailer for a new short film, available for viewing pleasure at HomeAway.com. Clark and Ellen Griswold return in "Hotel Hell Vacation," much to the delight of this particular National Lampoon fan. Visitors to the site can also watch other short videos, play the Griswold Getaway game, read (and vote for their favorite) user-submitted hotel horror stories, and enter to win a dream vacation.
With these and the other web-integrated Super Bowl advertisements, it seems that brands are beginning to understand how offering free, fun, accessible content to audiences can help to build customer relationships. As companies provide content like this, they associate their names with enjoyable experiences, and create opportunities to delight customers and to form positive impressions and reputations in the minds of consumers.
And after a customer spends 15 minutes exploring this fun content, he might also explore the actual product information on the rest of the brand website. Or at least remember HomeAway.com, for example, the next time he plans a family vacation.
Great job, HomeAway.com and others. I hope that next year, your Super Bowl ads will go one step further, by integrating with mobile content as well (as blogger Steve Smith points out).
Showing posts with label integrated. Show all posts
Showing posts with label integrated. Show all posts
Wednesday, February 10, 2010
Thursday, September 3, 2009
Merge TV and Internet? Please Don't.
Television industry veteran Michael Kokernak authored a MediaPost Video Insider article yesterday entitled, "Why Not Merge TV and Internet?" He reflects on the transition to digital cable and proliferation of TV content available on the Web, and opines that "[w]e...should probably be concentrating our efforts on how to combine the Internet and the digital television experience so consumers get content delivered through one seamless 'platform.'"
I am not exactly sure what Mr. Kokernak has in mind when he talks of "combining" Internet and TV into "one seamless 'platform,'" and, sadly, the rest of his article does not serve to clarify much. But if by "combining [the two into] one seamless 'platform,'" he means transforming the television set into a Web browser and vice versa, I don't think it is a good idea.
From a consumer's perspective, television and Internet serve two very different purposes, and it seems unwise (if not impossible) to try to literally combine them. The Internet should complement television, not replace it; just as the Internet has not replaced books and magazines, but rather has been added to a vast array of communication media. Certainly, e-books, blogs, online journals, and various wikis offer similar (if not identical) content to many books and magazines; however, the advent of these electronic versions has not meant the death of printed materials, because the usage situations are different. "There is a time for everything."
Successfully integrating media means that television content and Internet content should reflect and supplement one another. A friend of mine at TMP Directional Marketing, a local search marketing firm, once told me that every time a client launches a new billboard, for example, she adds the words and phrases from the ad as SEO keywords, so that the audience can effectively search online for more information based on the billboard they saw. The same should be true for TV content - media companies and advertisers need to make available (and easily searchable) complementary Internet content before they launch any newscast, show, or commercial on TV.
Integrating media does not mean that consumers want their televisions to act like the Internet, or vice versa. As pertains to the television industry, consumers use the Internet primarily to gather information related to something they heard or saw on TV, or to access content that they missed during its original TV broadcast. They use the Internet actively and up close. Consumers use their television sets for entertainment (or for passively absorbing information) - they want to sit back, relax, and watch a show on their big-screen HDTV half-way across the room. Consumers don't want to have both on the same physical platform. I don't want to always watch TV on my 15" computer screen; nor do I want to click around the picture on my big-screen TV in the same way I click around the Internet.
Hopefully that is not what Mr. Kokernak intended at all; hopefully I misunderstood his use of the words "combine" and "merge." Plus, he has spent his career in the television industry, and founded a company - BackChannelMedia - that allows tv-watchers to click icons on the television screen that send emails with links for additional information to the viewer. Perhaps that is closer to his vision for "combined" Internet and television. And perhaps his market research shows that this vision truly is a hit with consumers.
I am not exactly sure what Mr. Kokernak has in mind when he talks of "combining" Internet and TV into "one seamless 'platform,'" and, sadly, the rest of his article does not serve to clarify much. But if by "combining [the two into] one seamless 'platform,'" he means transforming the television set into a Web browser and vice versa, I don't think it is a good idea.
From a consumer's perspective, television and Internet serve two very different purposes, and it seems unwise (if not impossible) to try to literally combine them. The Internet should complement television, not replace it; just as the Internet has not replaced books and magazines, but rather has been added to a vast array of communication media. Certainly, e-books, blogs, online journals, and various wikis offer similar (if not identical) content to many books and magazines; however, the advent of these electronic versions has not meant the death of printed materials, because the usage situations are different. "There is a time for everything."
Successfully integrating media means that television content and Internet content should reflect and supplement one another. A friend of mine at TMP Directional Marketing, a local search marketing firm, once told me that every time a client launches a new billboard, for example, she adds the words and phrases from the ad as SEO keywords, so that the audience can effectively search online for more information based on the billboard they saw. The same should be true for TV content - media companies and advertisers need to make available (and easily searchable) complementary Internet content before they launch any newscast, show, or commercial on TV.
Integrating media does not mean that consumers want their televisions to act like the Internet, or vice versa. As pertains to the television industry, consumers use the Internet primarily to gather information related to something they heard or saw on TV, or to access content that they missed during its original TV broadcast. They use the Internet actively and up close. Consumers use their television sets for entertainment (or for passively absorbing information) - they want to sit back, relax, and watch a show on their big-screen HDTV half-way across the room. Consumers don't want to have both on the same physical platform. I don't want to always watch TV on my 15" computer screen; nor do I want to click around the picture on my big-screen TV in the same way I click around the Internet.
Hopefully that is not what Mr. Kokernak intended at all; hopefully I misunderstood his use of the words "combine" and "merge." Plus, he has spent his career in the television industry, and founded a company - BackChannelMedia - that allows tv-watchers to click icons on the television screen that send emails with links for additional information to the viewer. Perhaps that is closer to his vision for "combined" Internet and television. And perhaps his market research shows that this vision truly is a hit with consumers.
Saturday, July 18, 2009
Free Movie Tickets? Where?!?
Sprint sure is doing some interesting things to promote the new Palm Pre. First there were the series of commercials for Sprint's Now Network ("the first wireless 4G network"); I first saw these spots in May at my local movie theater.
The Now Network commercials were paired with home page takeovers on sites like Yahoo, YouTube, and AOL.
Next came the "Flow" commercials for the Palm Pre itself; these commercials have been deemed "creepy" by my new favorite mobile marketing blogger, Steve Smith.
Then there is the Palm Pre website which reflects the setting of the "Flow" commercial, and which invites visitors to, among other things, "Experience the Pre ad campaign" (italics mine).
Additionally, when a person turns on the Palm Pre for the first time, they see another beautifully done video in the same earthy, "flowy" feel as the television ads.
And now Sprint has launched the "r8 it" campaign, which gives participating movie-goers in a chance to win a year's supply of free movie tickets when they rate the movies they see. Viewers can rate the movies and view poll results on the National CineMedia website NCM.com, or, better yet, via the mobile "r8 it" app.
Sprint is also partnering with ScreenVision to install interactive kiosks in 500 movie theaters across the nation. Sprint subscribers can use the kiosks to download mobile coupons for the concession stand.
So, is this intense marketing effort working?
Well, for one thing, Media Intelligencer reports that the award-winning integrated campaign was successful in sparking early interest in the Pre. According to comScore, search terms related to the Pre doubled to 216,000 during the week of the YouTube takeover campaign. That number dropped after the release of the iPhone 3G S, but rebounded in the two weeks after the Pre was released.
Another clue is the Apple iTunes 8.2.1 update, which prevents non-Apple smartphones from synchronizing with iTunes. The Palm Pre's much-anticipated ability to sync with iTunes lasted for little more than one month before Apple blocked it. Is Apple nervous about the new iPhone competitor? Or just annoyed?
It will be interesting to see how the Palm Pre fares in the smartphone market. If it succeeds as a viable iPhone rival, perhaps Sprint's extensive campaign(s) will have had something to do with it.
The Now Network commercials were paired with home page takeovers on sites like Yahoo, YouTube, and AOL.
Next came the "Flow" commercials for the Palm Pre itself; these commercials have been deemed "creepy" by my new favorite mobile marketing blogger, Steve Smith.
Then there is the Palm Pre website which reflects the setting of the "Flow" commercial, and which invites visitors to, among other things, "Experience the Pre ad campaign" (italics mine).
Additionally, when a person turns on the Palm Pre for the first time, they see another beautifully done video in the same earthy, "flowy" feel as the television ads.
And now Sprint has launched the "r8 it" campaign, which gives participating movie-goers in a chance to win a year's supply of free movie tickets when they rate the movies they see. Viewers can rate the movies and view poll results on the National CineMedia website NCM.com, or, better yet, via the mobile "r8 it" app.
Sprint is also partnering with ScreenVision to install interactive kiosks in 500 movie theaters across the nation. Sprint subscribers can use the kiosks to download mobile coupons for the concession stand.
So, is this intense marketing effort working?
Well, for one thing, Media Intelligencer reports that the award-winning integrated campaign was successful in sparking early interest in the Pre. According to comScore, search terms related to the Pre doubled to 216,000 during the week of the YouTube takeover campaign. That number dropped after the release of the iPhone 3G S, but rebounded in the two weeks after the Pre was released.
Another clue is the Apple iTunes 8.2.1 update, which prevents non-Apple smartphones from synchronizing with iTunes. The Palm Pre's much-anticipated ability to sync with iTunes lasted for little more than one month before Apple blocked it. Is Apple nervous about the new iPhone competitor? Or just annoyed?
It will be interesting to see how the Palm Pre fares in the smartphone market. If it succeeds as a viable iPhone rival, perhaps Sprint's extensive campaign(s) will have had something to do with it.
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