For those of you in the US [and many others as well], it’s Superbowl Sunday and you know what that means… ads!
Although conversation for ads has been high for year,s with explosion of mobile this year’s getting talked up as the year of the second screen and we’re hearing about integrations with Shazam and other services to get people from TV to the web to talk. But of course it’s not the company’s asking that gets people chatting… it’s their ads, and those that stand out [good or bad] get the hype.
So whether it’s during the game, on the second screen or after it’s all over let’s talk about what ads caught your attention, which you shared a comment on and if all that noise makes any impact on your actual interest to buy.
i won’t be watching any of the ads, but i’m not missing any of the game
i watch tv on windows media center, which allows me to pause, fast-forward, and rewind live television, so i make frequent use of the button which skips 30 seconds, and i will just click it like 4 times in a row during a regular stoppage in play, and maybe 8 to 12 times in a row at the end of a quarter, say
if at any time in the game i catch up to the realtime broadcast, i will just put it on hold for a few minutes while i go take a leak or something
but i haven’t watched ads on television in many, many years
So right there we have our first social endorsement of the game… for windows media center
I think your comment matches a lot of people’s reactions to TV in general [I don’t even have cable anymore myself] so the question becomes, how does content from a brand move beyond the broadcast format to get in front of you and create a story that you can interact with, and respond too in a way that makes you consider them?
I think a lot of the ads are really entertaining… but they often miss their mark, which is to get me to buy their product.
For example, my favorite commercial was the vampire one (that’s how Twilight should have ended 20 minutes in =p). However, I’m not sure I remember which car the commercial was for (in fact, I had to watch it twice before I even remembered it was a car commercial).GE’s was another that I was just kind of left going “huh? What is it you want me to buy? A turbines a bit out of my price range.” It likely wasn’t aimed at me personally, but it could have been with all the products they make.
I didn’t really notice much of the social media element either. Granted I didn’t watch the game on TV, I just checked out some of the ads online afterwards. =p
People are pretty much divided between those who actually take the time to watch the in-between advertisements and those who don’t care for the commercials at all. The question is whether or not the people who do watch the commercials feel any compulsion to make any purchases after or simply forget about the ads and jump straight back into the game immediately.
Remember the goal for most major brands [i.e. those who can spend $3mm on an ad] is not to drive anything in the short term. Rather next time you go to the mini-market, Coke is trying to give you just the slightest influence… the back of the mind idea that you’d prefer a nice cold Coke Zero over that Diet Pepsi. There’s exceptions a growing base of pseudo exceptions with companies like Teleflora pushing for short term flower orders but even then the real benefit to them would be in someone considering their brand a few days later… being top of mind is a strange concept.
Not that I’m saying a superbowl ad is the right call. But is worth noting what success looks like vs the typical campaign we discuss here at SPF.
