• by Jim Meskauskas , February 10, 2004

NOTE: I'd like to comment on last week's column. For those of you who thought I had lost my mind, I didn't. For those of you who always thought my mind was gone but I had now moved on to letting the ol' freak flag fly, I wasn't. What we had last week was, in the infamous words of Strother Martin's Captain of Road Prison 36, "was a failure to communicate." I'd inadvertently sent notes for a column to the editors at MediaPost rather than the article I'd actually written. Given their commitment to letting their writers "speak" their minds with little restriction, they ran the piece as it was. Alas, as it was, was not as it was meant to be. I'm glad that some of you found it entertaining, some self-indulgent, and one even said it was "refreshing;" but whatever you thought, the effect was inadvertent. In the wake of this error, I've learned that A) sometimes good things can come from accidents; B) the phone is a wonderful way to communicate when email fails you, and C) the price of freedom is constant vigilance. The following is what I'd intended to run.

I thought long and hard about making a comment about the Breast Bowl 2004. After all, there is still plenty to be said about the role the Internet has played in turning a provocative dance move into a national media scandal.

Or maybe I could talk about interactive TV and DVRs? It has been reported that Ms. Jackson's unveiling by Mr. Timberlake was the most reviewed bit of digitally recorded broadcast media ever. According to TiVo, rewinding among subscribers was up 180% over its average subscriber rewinds.

Hasn't enough already been said about an action that took place during America's annual celebration of indulgence at this point? The Super Bowl is a time for Americans to have too much of everything: too much pre-game hype, too much beer, too much food, and too much sex (on TV; off if your team wins). Don't get me wrong... I like too much of a lot of those things; but hasn't enough already been made of the subject of a boy and his misguided quest for breast?

Okay, maybe a few more words... I mean, it is hard to ignore that the Internet, yet again, has played no small part in not only keeping the instantly legendary act alive, but it - and other bleeding-edge media technologies - is responsible for getting this relative banality to such a status in the first place. Certainly the rest of the media universe is complicit in keeping this non-story alive (what happened to the primaries, Iraq, Halliburton, a new budget, the Oscar race?), but there is no doubt that the immediacy of the Internet and the speedy ease with which images, opinions, and words can be exchanged was the bolt of lightning that got this Dr. Frankenstein's monster up off the gurney.

What, if anything, should this all mean to Internet marketing and advertising?

Well, for one thing, it is yet another testament to the degree to which the Web has become an integral part of our lives. Something in the offline world can trigger a flurry of activity in the online world. The inverse is also true (an antiquated example now, I know, but remember The Blair Witch Project?). People, and in particular television viewers, are no longer just using one medium expecting to get everything they want out of it. It is necessary to use media in concert with one another for an individual to get the information, image, or perspective they are looking for.

Taking a look at Yahoo!'s Buzz Index one can easily see the effects one media has on another. The top five searches in the immediate wake of the Super Bowl have been, in order, Super Bowl Streaker, Superbowl Halftime Show, Janet Jackson, World Poker Tour, and Ford GT. Now, I believe Ford was the sponsor of the pre-game programming. In one day, searches on Ford GT had surged some 2489%. Call me crazy, but maybe the sponsorship had something to do with it.

Tobi Elkin reported in the Online Minute last week that the ad for the Mitsubishi 2004 Galant GTS-V6 sent her to the web site.

Another big winner on the Buzz Index last week was Levitra, one of the drugs used to treat erectile dysfunction that was advertised during the Super Bowl.

When you think about it, except for soft drinks and toilet paper, brands, the products they represent, the story they have to tell, and the relationship they hope to have with consumers requires more than what a :30-spot can give them.

Advertisers should start looking at television to serve as an introduction to a brand or product - an opportunity to tease -- where just a little bit of value is revealed, but sends folks to the web to get a glimpse of the whole value proposition (puns intended). I didn't know that Levitra and Cialis were drugs to treat erectile dysfunction based on the TV advertising (we can talk another day about the surrealism of pharma TV advertising). But these days, I don't need to. If I want to know more, I can go to the Web, where the maker of the drug - GlaxoSmithKline for Levitra - can work to establish a much more involved and interactive relationship.

Lots of products and services should take seriously the modern reality of human media consumption. Hitting the same group of heavy TV viewers over and over again with your message is not going to convince the unconvinced to have a relationship with your brand's product or service. But getting television viewers across the spectrum of heavy, medium, or light users to reach out to you gives you a far better chance of creating an interactive relationship with a lot more people and turning them into the converted. Advertisers can save on overwrought creative considerations and bloated production budgets and settle in many cases instead for a short little teaser, knowing that if anyone is truly interested in knowing more, they will go to web to find it.

Just showing a little skin may be more than enough to get a relationship going with a potential consumer or reignite an old one with an existing consumer, if you can engineer a kind of "wardrobe malfunction" to get them to the Web for more.