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?

What they are and how will they affect the Facebook timeline and marketers?

Facebook launched the highly anticipated “Open Graph” apps last week, announcing new partnerships with 60 app developers, with many more to come.  Open Graph apps will enable the Facebook Timeline to track a user’s activity on and offline, with these apps posting on behalf of the user.  Companies such as Pinterest, Urbanspoon and Zynga will proactively engage with a user’s timeline, once permission has been granted, and post interactions that the user has had with products, services, news outlets, recipes they’ve tried and more.

This is a huge step forward for Facebook in its goal to make the new Timeline a true record of a user’s life and times.  But what does this mean for the average user?  Well other than making it easier for users to share and interact with one another (which can be seen as a positive or a negative, depending on with whom you speak), I’m not sure that this strays much at all from the culture that Facebook has already created. 

I remember reading blogs and opinions online months ago when the concept was first announced at the f8 conference of people debating whether or not this was just another way for Facebook to exploit its users and infringe on their privacy.  In my opinion, if you are willing to post the most intimate details of your life anywhere on the internet – Facebook page or otherwise – you’re putting any personal privacy under fire. Plus, as with other apps on Facebook, you will need to give permission for these new ones to work with your timeline.

Facebook has been a little shady in the past with its privacy policies and practices, but they are quick to right themselves – even if it does usually take a severe blasting online and in the media before doing so.  Users need to be careful.  If you’re willing to spend hours of your day on Facebook posting, playing games, chatting and the like – take a few moments every once and a while to pay attention to your privacy settings and you should be fine.

What do Open Graph apps mean for online marketers?

Now going above and beyond the everyday user experience, this does have some possibly major implications for online marketers. Facebook is very aware of the advertising revenue that the site generates each year (over $3.8 billion in 2011, up from $1.86 billion in 2010 according to Emarketer Inc.), and it seems to be constantly looking for new ways its advertisers can better target its users. These Open Graph apps are the latest tool to do that.

Don’t let them fool you. Facebook has positioned itself as the #1 social networking site in the world; however it is also one of the largest advertising outlets as well.  The Open Graph apps will allow marketers to present their products and services in front of the eyes of their exact demographics as they’ve been able to do with Facebook’s intricate targeting options. The interactions with these apps will play on the same concept of the popular marketing tool known as Sponsored Stories, providing outlets for advertisers to market to users who “Like” them and their friends (who will hopefully turn in to more of those who “Like”).  The difference here is the apps will allow the sponsorship to come more directly from the friend instead of from the brand; theoretically having a more powerful effect and endorsement for people seeing these purchases and interactions.

Communities such as Pinterest that are gaining in popularity can (and will) quickly move from a cult following to a sensation. Not only are these apps great for increasing brand awareness, but with so many inbound links the advertising (and SEO) potential on these sites will increase exponentially.

You’ve heard the stats before- 800 million active users, over half of them logging on in any given day, 350 million mobile users- Facebook has become a dominant part of the online world. 

So how do businesses begin to leverage their Facebook presence?  One element to consider is a Facebook landing page. Instead of the fan page wall, the landing page can be the first thing a visitor sees when they reach your page. This allows you to control your first impression and it can help turn a visitor into a fan. Custom landing pages have been around for a little while now, but with more businesses getting involved in Facebook every day, we wanted to take a look at the basics of designing and launching a Facebook landing page.

Designing Your Landing Page

The main thing you need to remember while designing your landing page is the layout cannot be wider than 520 pixels; the height is up to you. Two best practices to incorporate into your page – include design elements from your current website and brand and include a call-to-action button near the top or use an arrow to point to the page’s like button. In Lever’s case I put a “Click The Like Button” graphic under the logo as well as the “Like Lever Interactive” text in the final paragraph. Below is another example from one of our clients (we did not design this page).

Developing Your Landing Page
Developing your landing page can range from easy to difficult depending on which method you choose and your level of understanding HTML. One of the easiest ways to develop the page is to install apps.

• Wildfire’s iFrame for Pages App is among the easiest to use and includes custom HTML and image options and Fan Gate (Like Gate) options. An example for using this app would be a landing page with one image (either upload from the app or stored on your server) that links to a page on your site.Fan Gating or Like Gating requires a user to “Like” your page before they can receive the desired content, gain access to information or enter a contest or sweepstakes.
  Difficulty Level: Low – Moderate
• Static FBML (Facebook Markup Language) is another free app that will add a box to your page in which you can render HTML or FBML for customization. An example for using this app would be a landing page that has three paragraphs with different keywords bolded and an image near the top. The page is coded in HTML and the image is stored on your server.
  Difficulty Level: Low – Moderate
• Facebook Developers Page  allows you to build with Open Graph and integrate your app with Facebook’s core experience. An example for using this app would be a landing page that includes a sign up form that connects directly to your company’s database.
  Difficulty Level: Moderate – High

Landing Page Options
After the landing page has been created you will need to edit some settings so this page is the first thing visitors see, instead of your wall. From your landing page click Edit Page in the upper right. Note: You will need to be logged in and an admin to edit the page.

If you’ve installed an app choose the Apps link and then the Edit Settings Link under your apps name. You can now change the title of the tab. By default Wildfire’s apps tab is labeled Welcome.

After you’ve made the change, click Manage Permissions and look for the Default Landing Tab option. Choose the name of your app and click Save Changes.

You landing page is now the first thing visitors will see if they are not already a fan. To test your new landing page, log out of your account and visit your fan page.

Studies have shown that Facebook landing pages convert better than just having the wall show first. Keep your landing page simple and show content that will intrigue your visitors. If you are running a contest or have an item you give away for free, Fan Gating is a great option to increase your Likes.  Here are some more examples to get your creative juices flowing.

Do you or your company have a Facebook landing page or did you create one after reading this post? Leave a comment below with a link to your Facebook landing page.