Commentary

Super Messaging: Bowl-ed Over Again, Like A Prayer

I'm super-exhausted. A plethora of contests, activities, mobile apps and social media pleadings before this year's' Super Bowl abounded, because major consumer marketers insisted that I had these offline entertainment needs.

And Madonna. Man I need a break -- like a prayer. (They blew her up!) The material girl was followed by a spy-themed promo for "The Voice" -- with Christina Aguilera and Betty White!

Super Bowl 2012 meant viewers/fans/partiers were busier than ever. No, not exactly watching the game, but engaging in the big game, maybe even the commercials, or with the mobile app or whatever their friends were thinking in real time.

No time-shifting here. Perhaps this is in hyper-real time, not the usual time to make key marketing decisions on the next car I might buy, the next beer I might drink, the next kind of underwear I might need, the life insurance I might get, or the color of M&M's I want.

Super Bowl day brought very engaged viewers -- and very distracted viewers ready to accept and dismiss media messages from every direction.  Watching the game? Over 30% of women and over 10% of men said they would "predominately or exclusively" watch commercials.  (One teenage girl at our party: "Enough with the polar bears!")

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More than with other Super Bowls, it seemed I needed much more training than those on the field -- and perhaps a media and marketing doctor to attend to the dizziness of those late marketing hits. What used to be 60 in-game commercials have now inflated to 70. This Super Bowl instilled the obvious: Consumer marketing is increasingly a contact sport.

Super Bowl marketers again looked for early spin of their commercials -- on YouTube and in the press -- to extend the gaudy $3.5 million per commercial price tag. (The price is already around $4 million for next year's game).

On Friday, the Honda spot starring Matthew Broderick grabbed 9.6 million views on YouTube (or less than a tenth of the viewers who saw it during the game). The Acura spot starring Jerry Seinfeld and Jay Leno pulled in 10.3 million views. NBC Universal's own Hulu Plus teaser ad starring Will Arnett grabbed a slim 370,000. The H&M underwear spot starring David Beckham pulled in 624,000 views.

The Volkswagen spot featuring a dog getting into shape got 11.3 million views. Last year's Volkswagen "Darth Vader" Super Bowl commercial, meanwhile has now tallied 49.9 million views -- about half the viewers who saw it during last year's game.

More than 110 million people probably watched yesterday’s game, ate a fair amount of chicken wings and drank lots of beer -- with an expected 30 million people also using social media at the same time. That means second-screen devices were in play, with plenty of greasy fingers on screens.

And, if that wasn’t enough, viewers have beend encourage to review the commercials again as well as seeing whether they have won one of those 20 cars Chevrolet was giving away. Online? There’s lots of Rainn Wilson for Chevy messaging.

Should we take a knee -- or just one, last desperate bit of messaging to buy something? Hail Mary, indeed.

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