Doritos’ “Sling Baby” ad earned the “rare distinction” of being both the most memorable and best-liked ad in this year’s Super Bowl, indexing 177 on the former and 190 on the latter, reports Nielsen. In addition, Doritos’ “Man’s Best Friend” pulled a second-place ranking on best-liked (indexing 182), and a third place on best-remembered (indexing 173). As in recent years, the ads were user-generated winners of Doritos’ “Crash the Super Bowl” video contest. “Sling Baby” also emerged as #1 in the USA Today/Facebook Super Bowl Ad Meter. This year marked the first time that viewers (rather than a preselected panel) determined the meter’s results. M&M’s’ “Just My Shell” was close behind Doritos in the Nielsen results, scoring second in the remembered rankings (175) and third among best-liked (171). The rest of the best-remembered winners: #4, Skechers’ “Go Run Mr. Quiggly!” (164); #5, Coca-Cola’s “Catch “ (163); #6, Bud Light’s “Rescue Dog-Weego” (161); #7, Pepsi’s “King’s Court” (155); #8, Budweiser’s “Eternal Optimism” (150); #9, GoDaddy.com’s “Body Paint” (149); and #10, Budweiser’s “Return of the King” (145). The rest of the best-liked winners: #4, E*Trade’s “Best Man” (158); #5, Coke’s “Superstition” (152); #6, Bud Light’s “Rescue Dog-Weego” (143); #7, Audi’s “Vampire Party” (139); #8, Chrysler’s “Half Time/Clint Eastwood” (137); #9, Chevrolet’s “Happy Grad” (130); and #10, Honda’s “Matthew Broderick’s Day Off” (129). In the USA Today meter results, Bud Light’s “Rescue Dog-Weego” placed a close second, and the Chrysler Eastwood ad and Kia’s “A Dream Car. For Real/Adriana Lima” tied for third.
Rentrak Tuesday revealed what it described as a “milestone” deal with Interpublic that would use its TV audience measurement data as a “trading currency.” The deal, which was unveiled as part of Rentrak’s quarterly earnings briefing with investors and analysts, includes a new TV audience segmentation system targeting “movie-goers.” The Interpublic deal, which covers Mediabrands units including Initiative, UM and Magna Global, comes on the heels of news that Havas’ MPG unit is using Rentrak data to guarantee deals for client Fidelity Investments based on high-income households. During the call, Rentrak also disclosed new deals with several smaller agencies, including PrecisionDemand, which is run by Jon Mandel, a former top executive at Nielsen and at WPP, but Rentrak CEO Bill Livek implied that the Interpublic deal was significantly more important than all the others, because Interpublic plans to be “an aggressive user” of Rentrak’s data in the marketplace. “As a matter of fact, [Interpublic] is requesting that the {TV} networks bring in Rentrak,” Livek told Wall Street analysts during Tuesday’s call. Livek said that Rentrak currently has deals with agencies representing “70%” of TV advertising dollars, and that WPP is the only big holdout. Livek said he expected to negotiate a deal with WPP soon. On another media-buying front, Livek disclosed that Rentrak has signed a deal with a major political media-buying entity to use its data during the 2012 campaign season. He said the terms of the deal and the identity of the group could not be disclosed, but he said it means, “Rentrak is very important in this political cycle.” Rentrak also announced deals with two new networks, Ion Television, and News Corps’ Star TV. On the local TV ratings side, Livek noted that it already has contracts with more than a hundred stations, and that based on discussions with station group owners it already has relationships with, Rentrak would likely have about 400 local TV station clients soon. “We’re actually on fire,” he said.
A big-budgeted multiplatform marketing effort for "Smash," NBC's new workplace drama about producing a musical, delivered a good but not great performance on Monday night. The hour-long show running at 10 p.m., after a two-hour edition of the "The Voice," posted a solid Nielsen preliminary 3.8 rating/10 share among 18-48 viewers -- easily beating CBS "Hawaii Five-0" and ABC's "Castle." NBC spent heavily to market "Smash," using a lot of its own air time, as well as blanketing paid-media -- outdoor, radio and cable. An NBC executive said the paid-media campaign came in under $10 million -- which is a substantial marketing budget for a single network show. NBC was careful to note the "Smash" performance was strong, considering the problem the 10 p.m. time period has had for all networks -- a time slot increasingly getting competition from DVR playback of network shows. It said "Smash" scored the highest 18-49 rating for any episode of a regular 10 p.m. drama on ABC, CBS or NBC on any night of the week so far this season. For its part, "The Voice" -- coming off its very large 16.3 ratings performance among 18-49 viewers the day before after Super Bowl XLVI -- posted a strong 6.6/16 among 18-49 viewers and 17.7 million viewers in its regular time period. NBC said this was a 30% jump from last year's big 5.1 rating debut in season one. NBC says "The Voice" did better than recent shows running in their regular time slot after their post-Super Bowl time slot airings. A year ago, Fox's "Glee" earned a 4.6 rating/13 share among 18-49 viewers and 11.6 million viewers overall. The year before, CBS' "Undercover Boss" took in a 5.2/13 and 15.5 million. Overall, NBC pulled off a rare Monday night win, getting the better of usual Monday night winner CBS. NBC scored a 5.7/14 among 18-4 viewers; CBS, a 3.5/9; ABC, 2.4/6; Fox, 2.3/6; Univision, 1.6/4; and CW, 0.6/1. CBS and ABC were not particularly hurt versus their last original episodes for their shows. But Fox lost major ground versus the week before -- with "House" nearly 20% down to a 2.4/6; and "Alcatraz" off 21% from last week's premiere to a 2.2/5.
In its final count of activity off of the Sunday Super Bowl, entertainment check-in service GetGlue said 160,000 people tagged the event in its cross-platform service. In a detailed timeline the media social network issued this week, the highest rate of check-ins apparently occurred at the start of the fourth quarter. A chart of the progression of check-in activity shows that less than 1,000 users per minute tagged the show at kickoff, but more than a thousand check-ins per minute occurred around 9 p.m., when the fourth quarter started. The third-most-popular check-in time was at halftime. And while many of the sports-oriented apps may have been targeting a male audience, GetGlue skewed female, with 55% of check-ins coming from women viewing the event. GetGlue is a multipurpose service, allowing users to share a range of entertainment activities, from TV to movies to books. For this event, the audience skewed female (55%). Sixty-six percent of check-ins were coming from some device: 34% on iPhone, 19% on Android, 10% on other phones and 3% on iPads. This was also a New York crowd, at least in their team spirit. Conversations and mentions in the user stream heavily favored the Giants (62%) and New York (65%). Ads were mentioned more than 23,000 times. Madonna was mentioned 3,300 times. GetGlue reports that the 160,000 check-ins set a record for a single event. Prior to Sunday night, the most checked-in event for GetGlue had been the Season 2 premiere of AMC's "The Walking Dead," which resulted in 43,000 check-ins.
Cannella Response Television hired Randy Suchy as support & project manager.
It’s no surprise that the average American spends an amazing 20% of their time passively watching TV every single day. Viewing numbers have always been high, but what is truly amazing is television’s resilience in the face of newer media and technologies -- including the Internet and mobile and social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter -- that put the interactive control squarely in the hands of the consumer. The fact that we spend 35 hours a week watching TV is not lost on the media industry. A lot of big companies have spent big money over the last 25 years in an attempt to make the viewing experience less passive and more interactive. Some of those change efforts are driven by sheer desire to reach people on the screen where they spend the most time. Other initiatives are driven by fear that consumers will abandon ‘passive’ TV and adopt shiny new forms of interactive media. Why not bring that interactivity to the TV screen, and give control to the consumers without losing them to another screen? All in an effort to get them to watch more TV, be more engaged and buy more products as a result of TV advertising -- and ideally buy them right from their TV set. A very credible argument can be made that pre-Internet attempts at making TV interactive were not successful because of the economics of implementing said interactivity. With no two-way communication system (like the Internet) or standard protocols to enable and fulfill content requests, everything had to be built from scratch at prohibitive costs. That drove a lot of the early pioneers (remember WebTV?) into financial oblivion. That is not the case anymore. The Internet has made interactive media easy and affordable. The technology to deliver the entire Internet on the TV set is readily available, without the consumer needing a Ph.D. in audio-video cabling. Wireless TVs automatically and seamlessly connect to the Internet and high-speed connections are ready to immediately deliver whatever a consumer wants. And yet, in this era of seamless technology and connectivity, consumer adoption of interactive television has been surprisingly slow. While the Internet has permeated our lives in more ways than anyone could have predicted just a few years ago, TV technology itself has not been entirely static. Yes, it has advanced tremendously and has made the viewing experience richer. TVs are now cheaper, bigger, thinner, hang on walls and have all gone digital. With the ever-expanding array of channels and OnDemand offerings, it’s no wonder that people continue to spend more than two hours a day in front of the "first screen." Frankly, they’re just doing what they’ve always done--watching television. There aren’t that many apps being interacted with, Web sites being surfed and little true ’’interactive’ content being consumed on the TV. So what happened to the Next Big Thing? In the collision between technical advances and consumer preferences, consumer preferences always win. Not that people don’t like interactivity and having content at their fingertips; it just so happens that they prefer it on their computers, laptops, tablets and smart phones. They’re just not into interactivity on the 60-inch thing of beauty hanging on the wall where they watch "Entourage," "American Idol," "The Mentalist" and the Super Bowl. For the most part, the interaction they’re enjoying while watching TV is with family and friends, beer and chips. It appears that if they truly want supplemental content to their favorite shows and networks, a smartphone or tablet is within arm’s reach and optimized for the precise level of interactivity. A lot of smart companies are looking at the "third screen" -- mobile and tablets -- to deliver enhanced content synchronized to what people are watching on their shiny thin digital TVs. Some require the users to check-in and indicate what they’re watching in order to get additional content, rewards points and other prizes. Other applications try to passively determine what users may be watching on television and deliver additional content automatically to the third screen. These latter apps seem to have a higher probability of success, as they are not trying to change consumer behavior, but are recognizing and adapting the interactive experience to consumer behavior itself. The more successful new content technologies are not the ones that deliver interactivity to the TV set; they actually what TV is good at: sight, sound, motion. Despite its 2011 customer service debacle, Netflix still has approximately 25 million subscribers and maintains its popularity as one of the most popular over-the-top content apps available. Hulu is another example of a successful content delivery system. Both deliver what the consumer is looking for: sight, sound and motion. Not exactly interactive, but it gives consumers access to expanded content and more control over what they watch and when they watch it. TV is one of the best--if not biggest--inventions in the field of entertainment. And people expect it to do just that--entertain. It does not matter where the content comes from. Interactivity for the sake of interactivity is more suited for computers, tablets, smartphones and other yet to be invented devices. And while interactive TV may indeed catch on and take off, it’s more likely to be a matter of better leveraging the core advantages of multiple screens and platforms. The tablets are perfectly suited to drive people to specific content areas on the Internet -- be that programming content or advertising. Applications can passively track what people are watching and pull in the relevant content without the consumer having to do anything. It’s like adaptive cruise control and self parking built in! The user can sit back and enjoy an interactive and enhanced experience – across two screens, not one. We had the most-watched SuperBowl in history this Sunday. The audience is there and at $3.5 million a pop, the advertisers continue to believe in the power passive television. What are your thoughts on the future of interactive television? Drop me a line and let me know. (manish@symphonyam.com)
The BBC differs from other media organizations in many ways, not least of which is it’s ubiquity across all media platforms. That's a position it has occupied for decades, with each new medium being added as it has emerged. In addition, there is its public sector mandate, the fact it is not required to make a profit -- though don’t confuse that with any lack of fiscal accountability. Another thing that is different about the BBC -- and for which many media owners would give their right arm -- is the size caliber of its R&D operation. Perhaps the closest American analogy would be the Bell Labs of old. At times such as these, when we’re all trying to work out how best to navigate the waters of the media ecosystem, the opportunity to experiment, learn and incubate innovative learning has become a luxury few can afford in such a hostile economic climate. That being said, it’s worth watching what goes on in the few centers of real media-related R&D -- in the hope we can learn vicariously. For example, among the many things going on at the BBC is an initiative aimed at developing a means of navigating its vast archives on the basis of emotion. It’s broadly accepted that different programs make us feel different ways and that we enjoy certain programs more when we are already in certain moods. But we don’t always know what to watch --and we certainly don’t know which programs we haven’t seen are likely to hit the right emotional spot. So why not a system that enables viewers to search by emotional meta-tagging, based on characteristics of the programs and their effects of viewers? This is something the BBC has been working on for a while -- though it will be some time before anything sees the light of day on a mass scale. One can’t help but think of the application for media planning and buying, or even for creating program schedules. For planners and buyers, it’s easy to see how programs delivering the right audience could also be evaluated for a emotional factor consistent with the emotional tonality of the campaign being run. That would ensure a better contextual fit for the message; after all, what ad campaign ever ran without a defined emotional tonality? For programmers, the opportunity would exist to create a schedule comprising a range of programming that not only delivers an audience, but which does so in different frames of mind desirable to advertisers. This is all some way off, but never underestimate the value of what may come out of publicly funded R&D labs in far away countries.
It seems like over the last several years, in every major interview, the same general questions are being asked of entertainment executives: “Where do you see the future of television?” “How is digital media going to impact programming?” “What’s next for digital and entertainment?” All major conferences or events I’ve attended have addressed these topics through multiple sessions. While it may seem that these questions were on everyone’s mind only in recent years, it’s fascinating to take a step back and see that the reverse is true. 2012 marks the 15th anniversary of the Television Academy Foundation’s Archive of American Television’s extensive video interview collection, which began in 1997, a year in which the concept of digital TV was already top of mind for many TV executives. Back then, even before we knew how or when our content would enter the digital realm, one of the boilerplate questions we asked our interviewees was, “Where do you see the future of television?” Not surprisingly, many of the answers are the same answers we’d hear today: Betty White, Actress, June 1997 “Networks are a little troubled at this present day and age, because suddenly their whole world has fragmented, what with the various channels available now, and getting stronger all the time. Now the listings, you look down the list, you've got a zillion choices. You can't say, ‘oh television is so terrible now’ because, you've got another choice somewhere along the line. The networks just really have no way to fight that undermining. It's like a river running through, and pretty soon the banks get shallower and shallower.” Thomas W. Sarnoff, TV executive, June 1998 “I think there’ll be some dramatic changes. I think there’ll be more of what we see today, but the Internet operation, the computer operation, will materially change the way people look at television and at entertainment and I think there’ll be more interactive participation by people -- on television as well as on the computers and the Internet. But basically there’ll always be programming, there’ll be news... and I think it hasn’t really changed that much. The forms of programs may have changed, but the substance is still the same.” Dick Clark, Host/Producer, July 1999 .... Could television be dead? No, it will take its place along with some form of a thing that’ll be probably covering the wall of your room, that will feed you music, television, sports, news when it happens. That entertainment center, I’ve been talking about that for 30 years, will be a wall-sized television.... Radio didn’t disappear when television came along, magazines and newspapers didn’t go out when radio came along. So television is in that same spot. We’ve just got to find our niche. If I were 40 years younger I wouldn’t be the least bit concerned. I’d be looking to the new stuff to see what can I do to amalgamate what I know from the old media into the new. It’s all distribution.” Ted Turner, Executive, June 1999 “Television’s really not much over 50 years old today. It wasn’t invented and employed till 50 years ago. We now have the Internet and telephone companies getting into television and television and the cable companies, it’s very hard to ah, predict what we’ll see 50 or 100 years from now or even 20 years from now. It’s very hard to see, at the current time, for the time horizon of the next five to ten years, the networks will not go away, and the broadcasters will not go away. …Only the rocks last forever. You know nothing’s going to last forever. Not even this digitalized image that we're doing. It ain’t going to last forever.” Dick Wolf, Producer, March 2003 “If anybody knew [what the future of TV will be,] they could turn themselves into a truly wealthy individual because the whole system is going to go on its ass in about five or six years, because what's going to happen -- and it's already happening -- [is] that once you have video streaming and video-on-demand, 'Law And Order' will come on at 10 on Wednesday and it will start streaming and it will stream that episode. You will be able to call it up whenever you want until 9:59 the next Wednesday when the new episode will come on. What that means is that advertising on a cost-per-thousand basis won't make any sense at all because you're not going to be delivering the same number of mass eyeballs, but over the course of an entire week, a lot more people may see the episode… What's going to happen is,s you're going to have targeted consumers. And if you go into a BMW dealer over the next month, you're going to get sixteen BMW ads because that's going to go into their database. Then those will be tracked. All of a sudden, you'll get four Mercedes commercials because I know you're thinking about a BMW, but maybe you should come in and test drive the E-320. This is going to be targeting consumers…. And once that happens, I don't know what the economic model is. Because you are not going to be selling a cost per thousand. You're going to be selling a cost per consumer. Because they will be able to tell you, we can target your prime consumer on a basis that has never been possible before. What's that worth? God knows.” Don Ohlmeyer, TV executive, November 2004 “One of the big problems going forward is that people are on overload. They’re actually missing a lot of great stuff cause they just don’t know it’s there. You can only keep track of so many channels. You can’t comprehend what’s on 400 channels, so people narrow it down and the statistics show that up to 100 channels people will make room in their lives for. There’s too much to absorb...." Leslie Moonves, TV executive, December 2006 “The business is all about content and providing stories. We should look at the world as, now people can get our content in a hundred different ways. It used to be they just got it over the air. Then it became over the air and repeats. Then it became over the air, repeats and syndication. Over the air, repeats, syndication, DVDs. Now it's everywhere, TiVo, U-Tube, DVRs, Amazon – either in whole episodes, whatever. So our content is being distributed in 100 places, while 10 years ago it was distributed in one place or two places. So the world is rapidly changed. The key is to get paid for that. Because that’s going to have to replace advertising revenue, which may or may not go up or down or whatever--– that will be a key. But everybody should remember that the storytellers are always going to be needed. That it's always going to be about that, no matter how you get that content. So I think we should all be secure in the fact that if we do the good work, it will still translate. TV is not any different than it was 50 years ago, really, in a lot of ways. Yes, it's more sophisticated. But you watch a sitcom from then and you watch a sitcom from now, it's about telling a story. And some of the stories are exactly the same. I am bullish about broadcasting and creativity and the fact that we serve a major purpose in society. We inform people, we entertain people and we will continue to do that.”
Should Facebook look more like a TV network, say CBS? Maybe it should consider doing so, if it thinks getting into the creative business is a key to growth. Facebook pulled in $3.7 billion in advertising last year, with the average user spending 12 minutes and 30 seconds per day on the social media site, according to one estimate. Sounds like a lot of time. But many business analysts feel it is nowhere near where Facebook needs to be, considering its new rocketing stock market value. How can Facebook get people to stick around more? TV networks would tell you there is nothing better than watching a good "engaging" scripted (or nonscripted, for that matter) bit of entertainment. For example, if Facebook users could watch one 22-minute comedy (otherwise known as a 30-minute comedy) a night, 44 minutes of a drama (also known as a one-hour drama), or another bit of entertainment of a sizable length, Facebook would reach a higher level of consumer daily usage. Both Facebook and CBS are pretty well fully distributed in the U.S. Facebook has an estimated 225 million U.S. users (850 million worldwide); CBS gets around 290 million U.S. viewers -- virtually the entire U.S. population. Of course, not all "users" use any single medium all the time. For both companies, it isn't about getting more users or viewers, it's about getting more of those people to log on or tune in every day. The CBS Television Network pulled in around $7 billion in TV advertising revenues (national and local) in 2011, with the average viewer spending more time with the network than with digital media. Overall average TV viewership per person, according to Nielsen Company data, comes down to 4 hours and 34 minutes (274 minutes) -- with CBS commanding a good chunk of this time. This compares to daily consumer usage pf the Internet, which in its entirety, amounts to 2 hours and 37 minutes (167 minutes). Facebook seemingly has more promise that older TV networks because, in theory, it can do what TV networks do, and a lot more -- on any screen. Facebook has heavy interactions with consumers, who have all important interactions with friends and others -- thus creating what could be a deeper, more effective marketing tool. But to grow, Facebook might need what CBS -- and other networks -- have been working on for a long time: creating lean-back entertainment content. That's something that fails nine out of ten times. TV networks still have the stomach to take the creative hits. The big question is: Can Facebook find the next level of creativity necessary to cement its template as the next great media company?
Social TV is off and running and, by all accounts, will become a vital part of how many consumers watch TV. So why not layer in rewards for watching shows? Viggle is doing just that. Viggle, with its iPhone and iPad apps, offers an interesting twist on the new field of social TV. Rather than just serve up companion content, Viggle offers rewards from brands for watching TV shows. It’s a smart strategy, and taps into the consumer mindset that’s powered the success of social games on Facebook and check-ins on places like FourSquare. Human nature dictates that we like rewards. The app comes from Function(x), founded by Robert F.X. Sillerman who built and sold Clear Channel and Live Nation. Viggle has signed on brands including Burger King, Capital One, Gatorade, Pepsi and Verizon for potential advertising opportunities. Viggle points can be redeemed within the app for rewards from companies such as Best Buy, Fandango, Hulu Plus, Amazon, CVS, Banana Republic, Papa John’s, Sephora and others, or they can be converted into charitable donations. Here’s how Viggle works. When you start watching a show, the app on your smartphone listens for an audio sample of the show. Viggle then detects what you’re listening to and checks you into the show, earning you a set of reward points. After that, you continue to accrue points based on how much you watch and you can then redeem them for rewards, akin to earning rewards for using a credit card for purchases. Extra points come from watching video ads, as well as for playing games, watching videos, taking quizzes or answering polls. Viggle is working with programmers such as Bravo and USA Network to layer in additional features and show-related engagements. The bottom line — there are many social TV and second-screen apps vying for consumer attention. I’m not ready to declare winners and losers, but I like Viggle for the simplicity of its consumer proposition. Scratch my back, and I’ll scratch yours. An Android version is slated for release soon.
Over the last few weeks I’ve been thinking a lot about sports marketing, and this past weekend I was reminded of why: the emotions tied to sports are palpable and real, and they are the kind of emotions that brands can only dream of being associated with. It’s really simple, if you think about it. Try and find one other area of life where the emotions are as high or as passionate as they are with sports. I’ll go out on a limb and say that sports only come second to birth and death when you consider their emotional ramifications. It’s not uncommon for diehard sports fans to be as excitable and enthusiastic when talking about their favorite baseball or football team as when you hear a parent talk about the birth of their children or the memories of their parents when they’ve passed on. It taps into the same emotional core in our brains, and it creates lifelong associations. It’s not realistic to assume that household cleansers or shampoos can create that same emotional connection, but it is extremely plausible that brands want their consumers to have a strong, positive association with their brands, which is why sports sponsorship is such a tricky business. Sports sponsorships require a brand to engage in a trusting, long-term relationship, because you have to have faith that the athlete will stay relevant, and on the right side of the ethical mores that society puts forth for people in the public eye. Athletes are aspirational as well as inspirational, meaning that we can all aspire to be like them (for example, as self-confident as Tim Tebow). They are also fatally human, meaning they are only as good as the best or worst of us (see so many examples of mistakes from athletes in recent years). It may not be fair to place athletes on a pedestal and hold them to a higher standard, but that's what we do, and it's why sports sponsorships exist. There is high associative value to working with athletes, paying them significant money for the privilege of transferring their positive brand equity to our brands. If you think of the best sports marketing images of the last 50 years, you think of the images of strength and confidence that come from a truly inspirational sports figure. I think of Mean Joe Green in the Coke commercial. I think of Michael Jordan in the Nike spots flying through the air. I even think of humor (when it’s done right), like the Peyton Manning Mastercard commercials. In all these ads, brands were able to harness the power of sports to differentiate themselves in the eyes of consumers. That differentiation translates to sales. What's really interesting to me about sports marketing is that it would not have existed without television -- and its future is indelibly tied to online video. Sports is a physical and visual medium. You have to be playing sports to understand the physicality involved, and you have to see others play sports to learn about it and understand it fully. If TV had never been invented, the NFL would be nowhere near as popular as it is, and the NBA and Major League Baseball would be half the size they are today. Television created a way for everyone to see sports without having to physically be there, and the images you see on those broadcasts have inspired millions of people to pick up a bat or ball and play. Those images are inspirational, and online video is going to extend them even further. Social and mobile media are the future of sports marketing. With the use of mobile video, and sharing video through social platforms, these images can take on a life of their own. The more those images, in all of their video glory, can be shared and seen by droves of fans, the more impact they will have, and the more opportunity there is for a brand to reach a passionate audience. Television (in a close second with the actual stadium) is never going away and will always be the primary vehicle for sports marketing, but digital media has one heck of a future for sports marketing as well. Just you wait and see!
“Who is that, and what the hell is she wearing?” my daughter asked as the NBC Super Bowl pre-game show started with some country-like bleached blonde in silver lamepants singing the unctuous intro. I had a vague memory of this woman, but I was clueless. And this was only the first of countless times in the next few hours I couldn’t ID someone who clearly the rest of the country knew as a celebrity. “What the…?” My wife joined in as she walked into this scene. Twenty seconds into Super Bowl and my family was already feeling like aliens dropped into a strange culture. Of course, it didn’t help that my wife was carrying her stab at Super Bowl food – vegetarian nachos with organic blue corn chips, Newman brand salsa, organic refried beans, no-hormone sour cream. “I think we may really be in for it this time,” I warned. “We are so not a Super Bowl family,” my wife added. I had assembled the tribe for an experiment in second screening the big event. They had their respective devices at the ready to pursue the on-air call-outs for mobile complements and monitoring companion apps like Shazam. I think the silver pants pretty much set the wrong tone. When my wife asked which teams were playing, I had to say sheepishly that I honestly didn’t know. “We’re going to miss ‘Downton Abbey’ for this?“ she lamented. “Don’t you have that picture-in-picture thing? We could watch the Puppy Bowl on Animal Planet too.” “Oh, the puppies!” they both whined in cutsey baby pet voices. Wow, was this Super Sunday going south fast. “Look, the Sistine Chapel,” says my daughter, displaying her iPad with a 360-view of Michelangelo’s work. She was already onto her favorite iOS app, StumbleUpon. The family project was pretty much over before kickoff. It was up to Dad to soldier on. Indeed, the second-screen experiences I juggled this Sunday were just OK without being especially compelling. I have written elsewhere on Mobile Marketing Daily about the early reports on mobile metrics from the game and opinions by me and mobile marketing professionals about all of this. Here, let’s talk about the synchronized second screens in apps like Chevy Gametime, IntoNow, Shazam and Umami. Chevy GameTime was designed as a smartphone and tablet app that offered a review of the Chevy ads themselves as well as a batch of light trivia questions, promotional tie-ins for discounts with select marketing partners, and an ever-changing display of factoids. According to NPD’s report on smartphone engagement, the apps actually netted about 2.5% of smartphone users during the game, second only to Shazam. Personally, I think locking a user within a brand during the game is an overreach. Wouldn’t the world be a better place when brands are brave enough to truly sponsor a second-screen experience that reflects the full onsite experience? Still, what worked well about the app was its light content touch. It didn’t overwhelm the user with distractions. There were just a few main content elements, and updates were signaled visually by a vertical flip of the tablet app. While the experience was limited in the extreme, the overall format was thoughtful on a number of levels. Umami, which is newer to the second-screen game, is good for background data on shows. It did a fair job of pulling in content for the respective teams, with discussions and ESPN’s play-by-play analysis. This model feels like a template, but prime-time programming may be all some viewers want. It is low-maintenance and plugs you into current discussions. IntoNow has been pumping up its contextually aware second screening to good effect. When its audio ID detects different genres of shows like sports or news, it feeds different material. In the case of the Super Bowl, it was pulling in thousands of its own discussions, relevant Twitter feeds, real-time game stats -- and, most helpfully, feeds with on-demand reviews of the ads. In terms of a rich second-screen experience, IntoNow won the day, but almost to a fault. For someone like me, pretty much disconnected from the game play itself, it was very easy to pick up this app in between commercials and play about. And because the app was always on, it could do tricks like auto-register you for the Pepsi MAX sweepstakes when the ad came on-air. At some point in mid-game, and before Madonna wrenched everyone back to the first screen, TV had become much like radio. We were only tangentially attached to the main narrative on screen and more absorbed in smartphones and tablets. TV, even the Super Bowl, could be relegated to background content. Shazam’s game-like approach to second screening engages the viewer differently. It “Shazam-enabled” about half the ads so that the viewer had to tap the listening mode at the right time to get the complementary material. According to NPD, the approach, and Shazam’s advance PR, was relatively successful. The company says that about 3.5% of smartphone users were tuning into this app. I won’t argue with success, but I can’t say I'm entirely in the tank with the idea of having to chase ads with audio ID tools. The results of tagging an ad correctly could be good, but they were uneven. Was linking to its chat page and a YouTube ad the best that Pepsi Max really could do for someone tagging their ad? Even GE gave you a richer payback.Props to Bud Light, which made up for poor commercials with a halftime sponsorship on Shazam that gave you a free download and served up links to Madonna’s singles, the halftime playlist, etc. I will admit that Shazam’s chase-the-ad model was good sport the first time, but I wouldn’t want to make a habit of it. And I think sponsors who have us tag an ad in a mobile complement had best deliver something worthwhile. We don’t want TV tagging and second screening to take on the uneven reputation of QR codes. Once the novelty wears off, both the sponsors and their intermediary second screen apps better deliver more than most of them did last Sunday. But the experience of second screening across these apps raised for me a few larger issues. First, there is a curious disconnect between the tech-driven, Website-like consoles of IntoNow and Shazam and the immersiveness of TV. Granted, the second screen is designed for interactivity, and this requires interfaces and layouts that are not TV-like. But when a sponsor’s message has to be pulled into Shazam’s underwhelming template of tiny hotlinks in the same interface, you get the sense that the richness of the tablet/smartphone screen needs to work harder to feel connected to the TV experience. This should be an invitation to play with interfaces, with letting complementary content pour onto and fill a screen, to depart from nav bars and Web aesthetics. And while I won’t hold my family up as a good example of fidelity to the secular faith that is Super Bowl Sunday, it was extraordinarily easy for these parishioners in the back pews to turn the first screen into office daytime radio. And it isn’t just the Super Bowl. On most evenings now, we all catch ourselves so absorbed in smartphones and tablets that something extreme on prime-time TV snaps us to attention and we ask, “What was that? Hit rewind, I missed that.” I have three modes of TV viewing now. First is full multitasking where I am at least as engaged in a second screen as the first. In this case, TV is pretty much just cubicle radio. Conversely, if I have a show I truly want to experience in full, I have to make an effort to put the smartphone or tablet down and truly lean back. These cases are getting rarer. Finally, there is a new makeshift PIP mode. When I have something I want to attend to on TV without full investment, I now literally prop the tablet up on the arm of my chair so that I can interact with the display and keep the first screen in direct eyesight. “What the hell?” my daughter asks of this new posture, as if I were the one in silver lame slacks singing faux-country. By mid-game she is already snapping shots of her Dad surrounded by five or six devices and posting to Facebook. Apparently, she thinks she was raised by the whack-job Doc Brown from "Back to the Future." “Welcome to my world,” my wife tells her. Put another banana peel in the DeLorean flux capacitor, ladies. This is what tomorrow’s living room looks like.