Super Bowl Commercials: The Good, the Bad, and the Meh

The year's biggest football game watched by over 100 million people and what are we discussing the next day year after year?

The commercials.

Brands spend millions of dollars for the largest audiences in history to see these ads and in return, the audience puts them under extreme scrutiny. It's a lot of fun. Without further adieu, here are Kearley's picks for the good, the bad, and the meh Super Commercials of Super Bowl XLVII:

The Good:

Viva Young-Taco Bell

Terrible Spanish translation? Yes. Funny, energetic, oddly-heartwarming commercial? Also, yes. 

Farmer-Dodge

Um. They used Paul Harvey. The Raven's didn't win the Super Bowl; this commercial did. Because they used Paul freakin' Harvey. 

Whole Again-Jeep

It is a well-made commercial, it gives a nice shout out to the troops, overall it's great. However...did they really just quote Oprah in a commercial that she's narrating? Oprah has not reach quote status yet.

Space Babies-Kia

Baby animals in a Super Bowl ad could easily feel like going after the low-hanging fruit. Thankfully, this Kia ad avoids that by staying not-so-subtly inappropriate. Thumbs up, baby panda. Thumbs up indeed. 

Leon Sandcastle-NFL

Primetime will always bring a smile to your face. Throw in an afro and a mustache and you've got one great commercial. 

The Bad

Coronation-Budweiser Black Crown

We're cool, everyone! Hey, hey, hey, you! We're cool! Did you hear us say we're cool? No? Let me show you in an all style, no substance ad! 

Perfect Match-GoDaddy (or any other GoDaddy ads)

Go away, GoDaddy. Go away and leave our Super Bowl ad space alone. You've hurt it enough. Just stop. Please. Stop. 

FebruANY-Subway

I'm not sure I follow their marketing idea here: Come with an idea that's too hard to pronounce and then fun of it in a million dollar spot? Cool, Subway. Almost as good as you telling your customers that Footlongs don't have to be a foot long. 

Concept-Calvin Klein

The best question I've seen posed in response to this commercial: "Is it 1992?" Well-shot? Yes. Dated and probably not striking a chord with your average Super Bowl viewer? Also, yes. 

Prom-Audi

Drive an Audi and you'll gain the confidence of a lonely teenage boy! Does Audi sell a lot of cars to teenagers? Or do people seriously not to do demographics research anymore? 

The Meh

Get In. Get Happy.-Volkswagen

We had such high hopes for VW after "The Force". This is just underwhelming. 

Save It-E*Trade

Oh look, it's the E*Trade baby! I would be excited if it was 2008. Harmless commercial, but I think it's time for the baby to dip into its savings and retire. 

Journey-Bud Light

Bud Light took a campaign that I've enjoyed throughout the year and reduced it to a potentially-offensive cultural stereotype of New Orleans. Well done. 

All movie trailers

We didn't get much new footage of anything interesting and not a lot of upcoming films bothered with the Super Bowl this year (Man of Steel, The Wolverine, Captain America: Winter Soldier, The World's End). 

All CBS spots

I don't need to be constantly reminded that CBS is the number one network on TV. Why do I wanted to be constantly disappointed while I'm watching a great football game?

Share your thoughts in our comments section!  

Is email marketing dying?

Tying into my theme of social media, is the string of media channels that have to adapt as social media develops.

Does your business make use of e-newsletters, or mass email promotions? More than likely would be my best guess. It feels like nearly every time I visit a website, store or restaurant, I'm asked to sign up to join their 'super-savers' or 'VIP' club--and somewhere on their form they ask for my email address.

I used to think seriously before giving my email address, but it limited so much of what I could do online or prohibited me from having access to great discounts, so I usually caved. But I, and many of my friends, have out-smarted these email marketers. I give them the address to a dummy email account that I created. It is a real email address, but I only check it every few months (if at all) to clean it out. I maybe read 5 out of every 100 emails that I receive on that account. I loathe sorting through them; it's all junk and while the coupons might have been valuable, they weren't as valuable as the time it would have taken to sort through them and print them off.

So I have to ask--if say 1 in every 4 consumers gave a dummy email address like I do, how effective is email marketing really? Is it a waste of money?

A blog I ran across by a man named Scott Kraus predicted the death of email marketing--well not exactly. Rather, he predicted the death of email marketing as we know it.

I tend to agree. As social media becomes more social, and more interactive, one-way mass email communications from a brand to its consumer become less relevant. In fact, as fast as people are subscribing to email lists, they are unsubscribing--citing reasons like being emailed too frequently, receiving too many un-relevant emails, or receiving too many repetitive or boring emails.

The answer it seems is not to send more emails, but to send targeted, relevant emails to a more specific niche of comsumers.

Check out the blog here for more information.

A blog about blogging: Part 1

NOTE: I'm turning over the reins a bit here. As we work through our list of social media topics, we're going to be covering over the next few weeks, I'm letting Sara (our assistant writer and PR specialist) weigh in on the topic of "blogging" for this particular post. Please feel free to leave comments for both of us here!

Blogging is perhaps one of the oldest forms of social media. A blog can be a great tool for sharing knowledge and building relationships with family, friends, consumers and other businesses.

This entry is part I of a series about blogging that I will be linking to various articles/blogs on the subject.

What is a blog?

Blogging is writing a few paragraphs every few days or so and posting them online and hoping that someone will stumble upon it, read it, and find themselves interested in your business, or at least your expertise, right?

WRONG! There's a lot to blogging that a lot of beginning bloggers (and some veterans) don't consider. Some of it is technical--they don't know how to use the tools that their blogging platform provides for them to reach out to new readers. That, I will cover later. Right now we are going to consider the most basic blogging blunder, which in addition to terrible alliteration, is publishing unfocused content.

The articles you publish on your blog are what your readers come to read. But it is important to recognize that you want to attract a faithful audience that will return to your blog frequently to read and comment on posts. To do that, you need to focus on a specific audience that you want to attract the attention of, and gear your content toward their interests and needs.

What questions are they asking on Twitter? What topics are they most interested in? Write about it. Even if you are hoping to attract a broad and diverse audience, you need to start small. If you get a group of followers that are regularly reading your blog, rely on them to spread the word and link to your posts.

Also, remember that blogging is as much, if not more, of a learning process for the blogger than the reader. Constantly be looking for new information to share. The more you read, the more of an expert you will become on a topic and the easier it will be to establish yourself as one.

Thirdly, create boundaries. These boundaries will keep you from publishing articles outside your area of expertise, and keep your blogs short and reader-friendly. One rule I like to follow: The mini-skirt rule. Make sure your blog entries are long enough to cover the subject, but short enough to keep it interesting.

For more info, check out this blog from buildabetterblog.com:
http://www.buildabetterblog.com/2010/09/3-secrets-of-great-content-creation.html

You can contact Sara and Elisa at: bigideas@kearley.com for more information.

A Look at Social Media from Two Different Perspectives

A friend of mine sent this to me. I actually hear comments along these lines from people not too much older or younger than myself, so I'm not sure it's generational as much as personal preference. I think a number of people share this view.




The flip-side of that view: I thought this video was a cool way to explain the role that social media plays for consumers.






A couple thoughts on social media for those looking to enter this area. When choosing what social media you want to use, consider how you would use it. Only use as many as you have the resources to keep updated, and only use the ones that best serve your purposes. Are you looking to network with other businesses or business people? Try LinkedIn. Are you looking to interact with consumers? Try Facebook. Are you looking to share knowledge or keep consumers aware of what's going on within your company? Try blogging or Twitter. But you want to appear active and involved no matter what social media outlet(s) you choose, so do not overextend yourself.

Tell us - How are you using social media for yourself or for your organization?