Social Media Countdown to the Super Bowl - Samsung

I thought I was running out of social media Super Bowl campaigns with one Friday left before the Big Game. Then I saw the Ad Age article about the contest Samsung ran to pick a fan to star in its TV commercial.

So I blithely set out to find out what they did and how they did it. I came up pretty empty, which is a surprise with social media programs. The winning commercial is not on their website. I can’t find it on YouTube (ok, there are 3600 Samsung videos, but I searched several ways). There are “How I See It” (the NFL, in case you can’t guess) videos on the website but they are commercials with fictional characters.
The picture gives a clue to what was done. According to AdAge, “Samsung found its "real-life" candidates by going on a mobile marketing tour to eight NFL cities and filming more than 400 stories, which were whittled down to 48 for website visitors to vote on.”

Questions? How did they “whittle down?” How many website vistors voted? Why haven’t they told us? Why haven’t posted the winner? I think I can intuit the answer to the last one. They’re keeping it a secret for the Super Bowl.

Is any of this a good idea? Aren’t they losing a chance to create visibility and buzz?

I searched the name of the winner, Reginald Castilla, and found only a few mentions by bloggers who, like me, probably read the AdAge article. What I did find, however was the contest site, which I had actually found and mentioned a couple of weeks ago. Still same Vikings fan with purple face yelling something when you open it. But I don’t find the contest site connected to the corporate site.

I’ll answer my own question. I think they’ve lost a huge chance to leverage all the money they spent on the contest and the $3 million Super Bowl ad. If they wanted to create their own content, I guess that’s ok, although it’s not really in the spirit of the social web. There doesn’t seem to have been much promotion of the contest. They are not celebrating the winner in the days leading up to the Big Game.

It seems to me that this represents an overabundance of caution on someone’s part, probably the management of Samsung. Even more, it seems to be a willingness to let your customers in only part way, only under close supervision. That’s safe, but I’m not sure it is a campaign that makes best use of the social web.

Having searched several times, several ways, I can say with considerable assurance that it hasn’t generated buzz at a time when the economy is impacting many aspects of Super Bowl advertising.

But in the spirit of continuing to bone up on what’s going on, here’s a WSJ article that discusses social media integration into advertising efforts.

Enjoy the game!

Social Media Countdown to the Super Bowl - Pepsi

Read the earlier installments here.

A couple of weeks ago Pepsi sent me an email (I’m on their list) and told me I could get free tickets to the Super Bowl. The email takes you to a site called Dear Mr. President that’s populated with videos from celebrities, many of whom like Will.i.am were highly visible during the inauguration itself. The idea is a group letter to the new president, and viewers are asked to submit their videos.

The videos are submitted on YouTube, so I went there and took a look. There’s obviously a lot of other stuff in the Pepsi channel, but it looks like over 3,000 videos have been submitted for the “Dear Mr. President” project.

If you don’t want to make a video, you can submit text on Tumblr. This is a site I’m not familiar with, but it looks like a collaborative blog. Interesting. But the contest doesn’t end until February 9, so it isn’t going to be over by the time of the Super Bowl. However, when I clicked on the basic link, I got a popup saying I had been entered. Maybe I could win Super Bowl tickets or maybe a flip camera. It’s hard to tell. But it is clear that the winning videos are going to be posted on this site; I don’t think they are actually going to be part of the Super Bowl, although the Refresh slogan is being used in several ways to tie it all together.
While I was looking around I found another Pepsi Super Bowl promotion, pretty much by accident. This one is on a blog called “The Full Mommy” (cute, huh) and on a long list of other mommy blogs; the ones that that alert readers to coupons, promotions, etc. This may be a “reach out to bloggers” promotion; I couldn’t tell for sure but the rules on The Full Mommy site are interesting:

1. Leave a comment telling us your favorite Super Bowl Snack
2. Blog about this giveaway
3. Tweet the giveaway
4. Subscribe to The Full Mommy in a reader
5. Add our button to your site

A joint promotion between the site and Pepsi? It looks like it. You can get up to 5 entries by doing the further promotion; looks quite viral for both Pepsi and the participating blogs.

Put the two together and it’s especially interesting. Pepsi is doing traditional Super Bowl advertising (well, sort of; they’re doing one in 3D). They have related promotions which apparently are not actually going to show up in the Super Bowl itself. The Super Bowl Party Pack(s) will be awarded before the Super Bowl. The Dear Mr. President goes on until afterward. All of it is tied together as part of the Refresh 2009. It will be interesting to see if there’s any mention of these promotions in the Super Bowl, especially the halftime where Pepsi will be featured.

So that’s my update for this Friday. However, if you are still boning up for the Super Bowl, here’s an advertising report from TNS. If you find it interesting, I offer it to you with my sincere hope that you soon get a life!

So the Super Bowl countdown continues!

Social Media Super Bowl Countdown - The NFL

It’s not surprising that the NFL is taking the opportunity to promote itself on the Big Game! And since it owes its success to loyal football fans, bringing them into the process of selecting the NFL ad, as they have done for the last 2 years, seems entirely reasonable. They call that their Super Ad. This year they’ve added a Super Fan ad contest to the mix.
I checked the NFL ad site today (for the first time; I’m not a follower) and found that the voting was closed and both were being turned into the actual ads for airing on the Super Bowl (the lead time issue I talked about last week). The Super Fan, the “how I see it” ad is being sponsored by Samsung. I don’t see any sponsorship of the NFL’s own ad, which makes sense.
If you’re really at a loss for something to do this weekend, you can see all the videos on each part of the site, one for each of the NFL teams and it looks like maybe 75 videos for the “fan story.” That page opened on a guy with a viking helmet and a purple face shouting about something. That did it for me; who watches all of these???

Or if you want another use of your time between now and the Super Bowl, Ad Age has running coverage organized for you; that’s a nice way to make something easy for readers and goodness only knows there’s plenty of coverage to archive.

The NFL or any other business depends on its customers. Engaging them, bringing them into the process, makes sense. The NFL seems to like the results, having gone from one social media effort in 2007 and 2008 to two such efforts in 2009. Like Doritos, have they figured something out?

Social Media Super Bowl Countdown--Doritos

For several years marketers have been integrating first the Internet itself and more recently social media into their overall Super Bowl advertising effort. Obviously, this is an attempt to get more mileage from the expensive TV ads themselves. While all ads require planning and preparation, social media campaigns have to be rolled out well in advance of the big day. A number are underway, and I’m going to do Friday posts on them between now and February 1.

Let’s start with one of the usual suspects. Doritos has run contests soliciting UGC for their ads for the past two years and the 2009 contest is in its last stages. In their own words, “Here’s the deal:”

"Doritos® is giving people nationwide a chance to have their commercial aired during the Big Game. As an added bonus, we’re giving away $1,000,000 if the Doritos® spot takes #1 on the USA TODAY Ad Meter (see official rules). But who will win? That’s where you come in. Visit the gallery page and vote on one of the five finalists. Your vote could win you a pair of tickets to Super Bowl XLIII. We’re giving away a pair of tickets every day. So come back and vote every day through 1/25/09."

I’ll avoid making a comment about how that sounds like voting in Chicago, and point out that their campaign reaches out to a lot of people. That’s what a social media campaign should do; it involves both the creators of content (the ads) and the viewers of content (the voters). Good going!

For more details, and to view the 5 finalists, which were posted on January 7, visit their site. Notice that the SnackStrong site is, in fact, the Doritos home page. And you may want to turn down the volume on your speakers!