cadenceblog

Super Bowl Post Game Analysis - Social Media and Online Marketing

I really haven't followed any regular season sports for a long time. I'm one of  "those people " that usually tune in during post season when something exciting is going on, and that's how I come to watch the Super Bowl most years.

I watch for another reason too -- for the advertising spots and half-time show. It is that one time of the year when you actually anticipate watching advertising. Like others, I am curious what companies will deliver knowing that it costs millions of dollars (2.7 million this year) for that 30 seconds  of airtime.

What's different this year - social media metrics?
I'm not an advertising expert, so I'm not going to break out into analysis. I was mostly interested to read up on online metrics and possibly social media. Advertising Age did have an article called "Whose SuperBowl Ads Scored Online?". It is interesting because it says that this year reports are considering social media as part of the ratings:

"One change from years past: The report card took into account brands' social-media presences, a response to the fact that social-media sites are beginning to dominate search-engine results pages. One marketer that performed well last year thanks to its paid-search presence was Salesgenie.com. This year Reprise knocked it because it didn't have any presence in the category."

For a bit more analysis on online ratings and the Reprise Media search marketing score card mentioned in the article above, visit Super Bowl 2008: The Winning Brands. Pepsi, GoDaddy, and Cars.com, were this year's winners.   

Incidentally,  Salesgenie was the only B2B  related company that advertised this year. Some people say that the ads were better than last year, while others had a more negative reaction.

Watch the commercials in one spot:
If you missed the commercials or want to see them again, you can view them at myspace broken down by quarter (they actually aired this link during the game for reviewing later). For a breakdown by company visit Advertising Age (includes title, brand, and agency information).

Corporate Blogging: Smarter Conversation

Seth Godin pointed to a fantastic post - food for thought, about corporate blogging and humanification - from gapingvoid. Once in awhile, a post like this comes along, and rises above all the clutter.

My friend, who read Seth's blog post first and sent it over said "Seth Finds the Best", I couldn't agree more.
 

Explore B2B Branding

I just read Jon Miller's post on B2B branding, interesting. And ironically, I was reading about B2B branding on my 5 minute subway ride home.  It was an article from BtoB Magazine called "Emotional connection with brand is important" and it discussed presentations at  a recent ISMB B2B conference.

The article mentioned Philip Kotler, who is a well known marketing professor (Kellog School of Management), author, and strategist. Kotler has written a new book called B2B Brand Management.

The book explores the advantages of strong brand, such as higher prices (or margins), lower customer churn, as well as lower employee turnover.  Another speaker at the conference, John Fleming, principal of Gallup Organization, made a very interesting point. He said that "Satisfying customers is not sufficient", and notes that customers that are "passionate" about a brand deliver two times profitability of average customers. Fleming added that branding is not only important to customers but to employees. Employees need to be emotionally connected to the company brand so that the company can reach top performance.  This point makes a lot of sense to me. Sales people, probably engage more with customers when they love their company brand (not just the products) and customers pick up on this energy.  I'm sure it goes beyond sales/marketing positions, it applies to the whole company.

B2B brand is often neglected especially by small companies. I mentioned in my last post how Sun Microsystems changed their brand from high end server to a real systems company. That is a big company example, but still relevant.

Big or small, I think all B2B companies should continue to explore the importance of brand, and especially look at web 2.0 (if they haven't already) and how it impacts  or could impact their brand.

For more information, please read Jon's post (as well, he has two more sections planned on B2B branding). As well find a related post at Marketing Interactions blog. And don't miss this fantastic article from gapingvoid.