• by Karl Greenberg , February 3, 2011

Somebody should paint a checkered flag center field at Cowboy Stadium on Sunday because the Super Bowl XLV is shaping up to be an auto race. There will be a record number of carmakers -- around 10 if you include pre- and post-game affairs -- and a lot of them are extending their ads way off the gridiron with social media, teaser ads, and games this week and last designed to generate buzz and involve consumers in the build up to "Super Ad Buy XLV."

Mini Cooper, for example, has been running a teaser ad campaign with a Monster Truck theme, where a gigantic truck is doing a slo-mo jump over a phalanx of Mini's. The cliffhanger has its climax in the Super Bowl ad, when viewers learn whether the truck makes or breaks the Minis.

Kia has been promoting its 2011 Optima with "One Epic Contest," which teases its Super Bowl ad featuring an assortment of cops, villains and Neptune, who travel through time to get an Optima. Clues to the online puzzle have been hidden in the teaser spots running this week, and the final clue is in the ad itself. A handful of winners get the car. "This is a smart way to create a connection to the brand and the big Super Bowl spot before and after the event. And games/contests are always popular with consumers, especially when the payoff is a new car," says Reggie Bradford, CEO of social-media marketing firm Vitrue, in his blog.

Luxury brands are big in the game, with Audi, Mercedes-Benz, and BMW all running ads. Mercedes will do a "Tweet Race" featuring four teams (two people each) who are doing a cross-country drive to Cowboys Stadium and have to tweet 10 times per mile the whole way. Along the way big names like Serena Williams and New York Yankee Nick Swisher will get involved. "It's an aggressive play for the luxury brand to target the younger, hipper demo using social channels," says Bradford. "We think this will be another big buzz winner. Smart to engage celebrities to help generate Twitter traffic."

BMW, which is back in the game for the first time in a decade to promote its X3 crossover, is also doing an online contest where consumers have to guess the configuration of the vehicle that appears in the automaker's Super Bowl ad. "The X3 Matchup" is meant to tout the various personalization possibilities of the car.

Audi's ad moment takes a subtle poke at Mercedes, which it depicts as old-school luxury. Audi is connecting the dots with a Facebook element where there's an "estate sale" of old-school tchotchkes featured in the ad.

Brandon Rea, VP of automotive sales at the Detroit office of Web marketing firm Vibrant Media, says communications have to be about the product not just about entertainment. "They need to amplify what makes them stand out," he says." Vibrant, which builds contextual advertising linked to keywords in content, is supporting Volkswagen's Super Bowl effort with text-associated ads teasing the Bowl ad.

Jeremy Anwyl, CEO of Edmunds.com says a lot of advertisers, including auto advertisers, are more enamored of engagement for engagement's sake than in talking about why people should buy their vehicles. "Marketers are obsessed with social media and this can create activity oriented toward creating the most memorable or cutest ad, but which has nothing to do with selling vehicles," he argues. "You have to give people something that's relevant. Don't send them to some Facebook page to vote. You have to energize them to take action, and I'd much rather that action be based on their interest in a vehicle than interest in a commercial."

During Sunday's game Edmunds.com will run a real-time feed quarter by quarter gauging levels of traffic to Edmunds.com for brands that are advertising in the game. During last year's game, according to Anwyl, Hyundai saw a 600% lift in game-day traffic to Edmunds among people seeking information about the Sonata. The automaker featured the car heavily in its Super Bowl ads last year. Dodge saw a 26% lift in traffic seeking information about the Charger, which Dodge advertised in last year's game.

Anwyl, who points out that Edmunds gets about 100 million uniques per year and 30% of in-market consumers at any given time, says Mitsubishi -- although not a Super Bowl advertiser -- will have ads on Edmunds during game day to the net higher traffic to the site. "A company like Mitsubishi doesn't have big money, but I'm going to measure their results as if they had a Super Bowl ad to see how much of a benefit they can get from this tactic," he says.