Pulling Levers Blog

In recent years, it is obvious that the $3 million price tag of a 30-second Super Bowl spot can bring more benefits than the viewers watching the game.  The pre- and post-game online buzz of the best and worst ads brings an extended shelf life and larger audience for the top ads each year.

So, are companies using that high dollar time to capitalize on extended brand engagement through online marketing? 

In 2011, TopRank marketing blog gave Super Bowl advertisers a failing grade when it came to integrations into online interaction and social media. Was there any improvement in 2012?

What companies had the best online integration of their Super Bowl spot?

Online Video Views (Car Companies Ruled):*

1. Jerry Seinfeld’s Acura NSX commercial – 17.7 million views. A big hit among the male crowd, the guys I watched the game with oohed and ahhed over the car when this spot came on.
2. M&M’s “Sexy and I Know It” Commercial – 17 million views. The only non-car brand in the top five, and the only top five video uploaded by a channel other than the brand.
3. Honda’s Ferris Bueller’s Day Off commercial has 14.5 million views. With my circle of friends, this was the most pre-game buzzed about commercial, and maybe it is due to my age group being the generation for Ferris Bueller. But I had numerous friends share this video on Facebook the week prior to the game.
4. The Bar Side: Volkswagen commercial – 14.5 million views. With probably the most successful 2011 commercial, Volkswagen continued the momentum with a few popular ads this year.
5. The Dog Strikes Back: Volkswagen: 10.8 million views

*Numbers based on YouTube.com views as of Feb. 13. Results from general search “2012 super bowl commercial” and only based on 1 video, not a combination of multiple uploads.

Real-Time Buzz:

• According to Brand Bowl 2012, a Boston.com and Mullen advertising agency report using Radian6, Doritos generated the most Twitter buzz during the game. Out of 400,000 tweets monitored by Brand Bowl, The Doritos “Man’s Best Friend” ad (showed early on in the game) was designated most effective brand based on volume and positive/negative chatter. M&M’s had the most positive sentiment tweets.
• According to Google, the most searched terms during the game included: Madonna (which I admittedly searched to look up her age due to a debate among party goers), Halftime show, Patriots, Tom Brady and the Giants. The most popular commercial related searches were for:

1. Acura
2. GoDaddy
3. M&M’s
4. The Avengers movie trailer
5. Chrysler’s Clint Eastwood spot

• Also according to Google, top YouTube searches during the Game were:

1. Bud light platinum commercial
2. OKGo needing getting
3. M&M commercial
4. Doritos superbowl commercial
5. David Beckham superbowl commercial

• Lastly, another look at what drove Twitter conversations during the game, Simply Measured reports:
  • David Beckham, Seinfeld/Leno and John Stamos as the top celebrity ads
  • Doritos was the top brand mention (matches Brand Bowl’s report above)
  • Automotive was the biggest buzzed industry, with Acura and Chevy leading the pack
  • Coke just beat out Pepsi by about 4,000 tweets

Online searches, Tweets and video views are all great, but most of these winning brands had little to do with their online success beyond making commercials worth talking about.  So, which brands took their ads a step further and actually integrated them into online marketing efforts?

Some Stand-Outs:

• Google Paid Search- Car Companies are a step ahead.  After searching about a dozen of the top brands that ran spots during the game, car companies were the only ones running ads for their commercial searches on Google to capture traffic away from blogs and video sites. Stand outs were Chrysler with ads to both their website and YouTube page, Acura with a dedicated landing page and honorable mention to Samsung and Century 21 for running ads on YouTube. Granted, this is a week after the game, so some paid search campaigns may have ended.

• Mobile Interaction – Chevy Game Time mobile app and an Anheuser-Busch Budweiser app were the only non-sports brand driven apps I found from popular advertisers.
    
  One new area of mobile integration, however, that stood out across a number of ads was the use of Shazam to bring you to mobile content without having to type anything into a browser.
  
• Call-to-Action– Many companies fell short of strong online call-to-actions by simply posting a Twitter hashtag and hoping for discussion. Although I think this is the largest area for improvement, there are an increasing number of companies compelling people to visit their site or social account.
  • GoDaddy.com continues their sex-appeal teaser approach.  However, their ads are not very popular across all audiences, and I needed to explain to people at the party what GoDaddy.com was after years of their ads running.
  • Bud Light, on the other end of the spectrum, had a more morally driven call-to-action to their Facebook page for The Animal Rescue Foundation. 
• Website Integration – Probably the biggest area of improvement in my opinion. Some brands worth mentioning, although there are others that can be added to the list:
• Chevy Sonic’s Letsdothis.com interactive site
  
• Best Buy’s new mobile site bestbuyon.com
• The movie Battleship collected email and phone number for future engagement through a Fandango.com sweepstakes
• Coca-Cola had a Polar Bowl site (the company exceeded goals for engagement) that led to the issue of the site being down throughout parts of the game due to the high volume of visitors. Unfortunately the site is no longer live for post-game engagement.

Overall, based on the blogs and articles I reviewed, online marketers like to criticize brands for their lack of integration of Super Bowl ads with the internet.  But I think each year we have seen improvements, companies learning from mistakes and growing goals of engagement and interaction that goes beyond the 30 seconds their ad runs. 

What were some of your favorite online-integrated Super Bowl ads?

Local Search Engine Optimization Is Powerful For Small Businesses

If you are a small or medium business trying to leverage your online presence, you’ve undoubtedly heard of Google Places (also called Google Local). It’s a great free product from Google that creates listings of brick and mortar businesses. These business listings show up in results when people search Google, Google Maps, Google Shopping and Google on mobile devices. These heavily integrated search results are the basis for local search engine optimization or local SEO.

Don’t Get Hurt In The Google Local Rankings

Google Places is still technically in beta and offers little support to users. This causes a lot of frustration for people that encounter errors with their Google Local listing, and for small businesses that don’t have websites or can’t afford SEO services, an error on a Google Local business listing can be the difference between significant revenue. Below I’ll detail out a solution to a common problem – removing duplicate Google local listings. This is important because if your business information is displayed for multiple listings, you are losing trust from Google and you are hurting yourself in organic web and local search results.

I’ll be using the following business information in my example, which I know has a duplicate Google local problem:

White Oak Dental

1580 White Oak Drive, Chaska, MN 55318

(952) 448-2868

Chaskadentist.com

Note: You should only proceed with these steps if your desired Google local is verified in Google.

1. Search your phone number on maps.google.com.
2. You’ll see every business listed under that phone number. Typically it’s the same business with slightly different information. In this case, there are four businesses listed under the White Oak Dental phone number. I know I want result B as the only listing, so the rest of the steps focus on achieving that.
3. Click to one of the undesired listings. I clicked to result A. Select “more” and then “report problem”.
4. Select “Place has another listing”. In the Details box, type the business information exactly as it appears on the correct Google Local listing.
   
5. When you click “report problem” you are done and Google politely thanks you for your feedback. I always select “Send email when the problem is reviewed” because Google does follow up and notify you if action has been taken. Be sure you are signed in to a Google account so you can receive the follow up email.

If you research how long it will take to rectify the problem, you may find some Google help forums ask for 4-6 weeks before you repeat your actions. I’ve seen Google reply in as little as one week, but they put enough disclaimers everywhere so that they don’t have to reply, nor are they required to take any action. However, if your report of an incorrect listing is justified, it is likely to be fixed.

It’s 4:00pm CT on the Friday, we’re taking a break on the blog from the normal business of online marketing and focusing on what everyone else is talking about this weekend- the Super Bowl!

Head over to the Lever Interactive Facebook page and cast your prediction for 2012 Super Bowl champion.

Currently the Giants are just edging out the Patriots in our highly scientific poll. With “Who cares, I’m just watching for the commercials” coming in a close third.

And as someone who grew up almost directly half way between Boston and New York, with my mom from Massachusetts and my dad from New York, my vote could really go either way.  I’m not a fan of either team (Go Ravens! or Jets!), so for me it comes down to which team I dislike the least…the New York Giants.

Stay tuned next week for our blog post about Lever’s favorite Super Bowl commercials and best integrations into online marketing campaigns.

When a well-known, furniture retailer and manufacturer contracted Lever Interactive to manage their paid search campaign, they had several goals they wanted to achieve.  Besides the most common goal we hear from all of our clients (please make our campaigns more efficient!), they wanted to make sure they were spending money in the right locations.  Their unique challenge is that they are in 26 different DMAs across the United States with over 100 corporate store locations, and their goal is driving foot traffic to a store; not an online purchase or lead.

Previous to contracting Lever, this furniture retailer was working with another agency that targeted all 26 DMAs within each Google AdWords campaign.  While it is great that they were targeting each of the markets, there were several problems we isolated right out of the gate.

1)      With all DMAs combined, the retailer had limited insight into which markets where driving conversions or cost. 

2)      They were unable to control budget by DMA; one of the client’s ultimate goals. 

DMAs are different shapes and sizes depending on the area.  We discovered the previous agency was targeting DMAs without consideration of store locations. In one market, for example, they were targeting a huge metropolis but their store location was actually on the very outskirts of the DMA.  The DMA spanned over 100 miles from one end to the other…which is a long way to drive to see furniture!

 

So, after digging into their historical data and identifying their “pain points” and objectives, we started outlining our process for restructuring the account with the following goals in mind:

1)      The retailer needed comprehensive, DMA level performance data so they could make better informed decisions on where to allocate their media spend based on in-store and web traffic.

2)      They needed to know that the users they were targeting geographically were qualified, and most likely to translate into store traffic. (Conversions were tracked based on visits to the store locator page).

In the end, Lever decided to restructure the account based on DMA, with a new account for each DMA, all housed under one MCC. This extensive campaign restructuring, that focused on store specific campaigns and included geo-targeting adjustments, help achieve our client’s goals.  In just a few months, we were able to:

• Decrease CPAs between 15-30% month over month since the account restructure.
• Allocate budget amongst all 26 DMAs with budget goals that are dependent on in-store traffic.  For example, if one market has been having slow foot traffic, then DMA budget is readjusted so that market can drive more web traffic in an effort to increase in-store traffic.
• Reduce spend 44% month over month in their most troubled DMA that was producing unqualified traffic.  This also reduced the DMA’s CPA by 54%.