• by James Heughens , March 7, 2011

Super Bowl commercials -- marketing's ultimate competition. In case you haven't heard, real people outside our little world neither know or care about Cannes and usually cannot pronounce it. By contrast, everyone knows about these commercials -- the one-night "American Idol" competition for agencies and marketers. Hundreds of articles and rankings will tell you how Groupon fumbled, HomeAway was wide right and Chrysler and VW scored big. That was fun. But now what?

Let's see how these marketers and agencies fared the morning after -- online, where everyone goes before they buy one of these products. In other words, let's see if they want a relationship or if this was just a one-night stand.

First up, Groupon. A search, a click and ... ugh. A request for my city and email address. Harrumph. Where's the apology! After it aired the most offensive 30 seconds of the night, I would expect, at least, a quick link to their public apology. Alas, two or three minutes of clicking and the elusive apology will not reveal itself. Time to move on. Too bad. I heard this was a pretty cool thing, but I cannot get over the Tibet exploitation without a healthy dose of executive remorse and perhaps a sacrificial lamb or two.

Next up -- HomeAway. The home of baby slammers. Let's check out their press room, where we find an intelligent and explanatory letter from Mr. Sharples, the CEO. Apology accepted and you have already replaced the offensive scene. I question your judgment, but not your intentions. A bad first date, but there may be a future for us. The site is quick, clean and to the point. Nice recovery.

Let's move on to the car guys. I can only remember two ... Darth Vader and Eminem. I mean VW and Chrysler.

VW showed me a cute kid and a nice car, but which car? It's not one of the vehicles on their home page. That seems like a missed opportunity. Search again and the results still don't tell me what car that was! Over to YouTube, another viewing of the commercial, and I learn it was the Passat. Back to vw.com, where I find clean images and nicely presented features. No special "experiences" -- I guess I was expecting a little something extra -- but what I am given is fine. Lil' Darth Vader hooked me and I am in shopping mode already. It was a squirrelly path to get here but the wait was, well, acceptable.

On to Chrysler.com, where I find ... the commercial waiting to be played on the home page? Really? The commercial is why I am here. I don't really need to see it again. You hooked me at "Imported from Detroit"! Sigh. I'll watch it again, in a popped-up YouTube window, then back to Chrysler.com and there it is -- the 200 -- on the home page. Well, kind of on the home page after those video shenanigans. A few clicks, lots of loading time, plenty of dark images on black backgrounds, and I am left wondering: "What is this car really all about?" I am skeptical. They had me at "this is what we do" but lost me at "dotcom." Too bad. The commercial induced chills, and the newest products, Grand Cherokee and Ram, are fantastic.

In summary, there are plenty of missed opportunities and lessons learned from this year's Super Bowl. We know offline messaging drives online activity, which then leads to sales. Thus, preparing the digital ecosystem to reap the benefits of a massive Super Bowl investment is tantamount.

Monday after the Super Bowl, Chrysler traffic on Edmunds was up exponentially, and their Yahoo takeover the same day was a smart move but it simply pointed to the commercial on YouTube. Nothing on the site acknowledged the premise of "Imported from Detroit" or "this is what we do." The only way they offered to satiate my curiosity is to show me the ad -- again. I read that the idea was "concepted three months ago" which probably left weeks to work on the digital components -- hardly enough time to prepare an ecosystem that pays off the promise of the commercial. In short, it was a trailer in need of a movie.

VW showed some smarts by releasing their commercial on YouTube Wednesday night, garnering well over a million views before Sunday. However, more focus on their SEM campaigns, SEO copy and some home page tweaks could have given the Vader spot more force. (Sorry, I could not resist.) By contrast, the Chevrolet ads were not as memorable, but they did adjust their SEM approach to support the campaign which, unfortunately, was diluted due to technical issues with their YouTube channel and user-generated content.

In short, marketing in and around the big game is not just about a great Super Bowl spot, but about having a well-thought-out Super Bowl strategy, including scenario planning in the event of an extreme failure and time to create a robust digital ecosystem that can harvest an extreme success?