The topic of the day happened to be a marketing one, and a common question I found myself fielding was, “everybody always says networking is important, but I don’t really get anything out of it, got any tips for me?”

Networking events can help you meet potential clients, but they can also help you meet partners, thought leaders, and other people who can help refine your business ideas into focused plans. Regardless of whether you are at a networking event or at a friend’s holiday party, there are some standard steps you can take to squeeze the most out of any setting.

Before the event

Bring a stack of your business cards. Even if there are only 20 people at your event, they may each ask for 10 or more cards to share with their colleagues. The last thing you want to happen is to run out of cards at these events.

Look presentable. Don’t forget, first impressions count. Dressing nicely makes you approachable and appear professional, a necessity to getting recommended to attendees contacts.

Practice your introduction. Typically, these events start off with an ice breaker and everyone introduces themselves. This is likely the first time these people are hearing you speak, so be prepared to give a 30 second description of who you are, what you do, and what you are looking to find out. This will help other participants make introductiosn that are helpful to you.

Listen

Know thy customer. Ask about the services he provides, and who he considers the perfect client - then listen. It will help you find the right person to introduce him to.

Let your ears absorb as much knowledge as possible. There tends to be a lot of smart people at these types of events, and there is much to learn about various industries from first hand accounts.

Make your rounds

Share. If you find someone interesting, don’t monopolize access to him, it is considered rude. Ask for his card, and make a note to yourself to catch up with him near the end, or during a lunch in the future.

It’s a numbers game. The more people you meet, the better chance you have of meeting the perfect person for your particular current need. Try to introduce yourself to everybody, and make a mental list of the most useful people for you to keep in touch with.

After the event

Strike while the iron is hot. Right after the event, make a chart with all of the collected business cards info, and a list of what services you might be able to offer each person from the event. The longer you wait, the less you will remember about each participant.

Get personal. Follow up with a personalized email about 24 hours later, with a specific call to action that will increase your credibility and name recognition. In my case, it might be to visit and subscribe to my blog.

You scratch my back, I’ll scratch yours. In your email, offer to explain anything there wasn’t time to expand on at the event, and make it clear you want to help the other person succeed in any way you can (with expertise, or with contacts).

It takes some practice, but you are bound to find these events useful over time. Think of it this way, by going to just one event per month, you can likely meet 250-500 new people each year, all enthusiastic about improving their business. That’s a lot of potential business…

A study, titled the Online Journalism Credibility Study, has just come out that shows a gap in how newspaper editors and readers feel about anonymous comments being posted on news articles.

The Results

The editors, overwhelmingly (70%) felt that anonymous comments harmed proper journalism, most likely due to the flood of factual corrections and emotional rants they get in these comments, neither of which seem to make them smile. Only 45% of readers, on the other hand, felt that allowing anonymous comments was bad journalism.

Even more telling, 58% of editors were against journalists adding comments in news stories which may give away personal views, while only 36% of the readers felt that way. That tells me that readers are very interested in hearing responses from the writers of an article after they comment.

The Allure of Responding to Newspaper Articles

I have felt many times during reading an article this sentiment - “I disagree, I only wish there was a way to explain why this article is wrong”. The ability to post comments on stories online now provide an outlet to voice my opinion. Given the amount of comments I see in the average news story these days, I’d say many other people have had the same feelings.

A common complaint of many newspaper readers in the past has been that there is a lack of objectivity to news, and the selection of what is given the most attention shows a certain lack of objectivity as well. The solution that occurred was largely due to blogs popping up all over the internet, preparing readers to interact with news stories, instead of just reading them.

Blogs were unique in that they relished reader comments, and openly asked readers to contribute to a story with their thoughts, opinions, criticism. Pretty soon, online newspaper sites, such as the NY Times, were forced into accepting comments on many of their news articles, in order to keep readers on their sites.

Newspapers Are Losing Relevance (and Profits)

As I mentioned in the past, newspapers are losing advertisers, readers, subscribers, and importance. Editors’ and news organizations’ long held beliefs about the world “needing them” has made them slow to adopt features like open conversations on articles. Basically, there is no more marketplace interest left in pure facts, devoid of emotion or a particular personal view. It is no coincidence that blogs are so popular - they usually have strong views in a particular direction, and openly invite dialogue.

News Cycle

Newspapers are also having trouble keeping up with the pace of the news cycle these days. Between two issues of the NY Times, most online news sites have had 8-10 different “headline stories”. This promotes more interest and visits, due to the visitors’ expectations of getting fresh materials frequently.

Editors’ Value is Dropping

It sounds to me like the editors are worried. Very worried. You see, they suddenly have a LOT more competition for your eyes. There is only so much time one can spend reading in a given day, and between millions of blogs and comments being posted on newspaper sites, they are losing their “market share of voice”. And, don’t forget, people are producing much more relevant “local news”, in the way of social news. Sites like Facebook, MySpace, provide an easy way to hear about social news in your community and social circle.

Is it fair to say edited news is dying out?

Last time I posted about jobs, I mentioned the value of search optimizing your resume, and gave you an easy way to discover the most recruiter-searched resume keyword terms. I also discussed the reason many people end up hating their job, and how to avoid it.

Today, I wanted to show you a tool to find out the trend for a particular keyword in job descriptions posted by employers. Seeing a trend can be an incredibly powerful visual aid in ascertaining the demand for certain skills. To find out this useful information, I use a nifty site called Indeed.com’s job trend tool. I show you some uses, below.

Research a Job Sector

Let’s use the term “Photoshop”, (a popular graphic design software) for example. As you can see in the graph below, the recent demand for photoshop skills appears to have dropped off dramatically.

My guess is the design market has reached saturation, and many workers in non-design positions have sufficient Adobe Photoshop skills to pitch in with moderate levels of design work when necessary, eliminating the need for full time designers at many companies.

The fascination with posting our digital photos everywhere likely increased general interest in Photoshop skills, and the industry workers seem to have gotten hit by that.

Determine Which Skills to Learn

You can also use this tool to consider which particular skills are worth your time to learn, based on their trend. For example, I plotted different nursing qualifications to find out which are most in demand, and the growth of each. You can see below that some qualifications appear to be much better bets for a student to spend time on.

There’s Safety In Portability

No matter what industry you are in, there always seems to be the same foundation. This foundation is the group of positions which exists regardless of the economy’s situation, and weathers any storm. Some examples of foundation positions are marketing positions, executive leadership, public relations, management, secretarial work, accounting, and legal.

These positions must exist for the company to function, and can largely be transferred from industry to industry and company to company. Indeed, many of the top CEOs of our time have held the post in completely unrelated industries. James McNerny, for instance, was CEO of 3M before he assumed the top position at Boeing. I hope planes have nothing to do with tape!

During bad economies you can protect your career, even if you get laid off, by being in a foundation position. There will always be another company that needs a foundation employee, and often will see your outside industry experience as valuable.

If you have already chosen your career, you can still take steps to improve your odds in a bad economy. Here are some great tips to recession-proof your job search.

Seth Godin put up a great post about how Borders Books has cut inventory yet increased sales. Borders accomplished this by carrying less titles, but showing them in a more creative way. Essentially, Borders quit trying to show you what you can buy, and started helping you make that decision by showing you the books it was most likely to convince you to buy.

It was a smart move by Borders (not just because of my fabulous 20/20 hindsight), because they realized that their brick n’ mortar store could never compete on the dimension of variety with online bookstores like Amazon. Instead of chasing a dream, they decided to use one of the huge advantages a brick n’ mortar store has over the internet - better control over what you see.

Brick vs. Click

When you visit a site, you are limited to your screen size, and then there is the space for navigation, and all the other content. So, while you may have an endless selection, you can’t really see that many purchase options clearly (with a beautiful cover that some marketer did a focus group for) - it’s usually a tiny image and some text. On top of this, you can’t feel the book. I’m seeing more and more creative book cover textures these days.

It’s funny, but walk around a Barnes & Noble when you get a chance - you’ll notice people aren’t just picking up the book to read the inside cover or the back…they need the texture. Indeed, if you have picked up a copy of Made To Stick, you know what I’m talking about. You can actually feel the duct tape on the cover. It’s neat. You would have missed that part online.

Blockbuster Thinks (For You)

Borders Books certainly isn’t alone in realizing this, and a while back Blockbuster reviewed their own psychology textbook to help them compete with online DVD sales. One of my favorite companies to follow is Blockbuster, so I noticed this right when they made the change. They employ a very shrewd two-tier strategy:

On the outer walls of the store, they stock current movies with the front covers showing, and have up to a dozen or so placements (all right beside each other). One might think “what a waste of space - I saw they had this already”. However, in reality it actually aids them in making the sale - any sale.

Too much choice hinders decision making, and they are looking to move those new movies off the shelf. By cutting the total number of choices, and placing a more “convincing” argument for renting one of the choices they do have, they raise their odds of a successful rental.

Blockbuster also places “contextual ads” (and by that I mean other movies starring the same actor) right in the middle of that whole display, which guarantees that old stock gets looked at (especially when Blockbuster runs out of the new movie starring that actor, which seems to happen a WHOLE LOT more often ever since they don’t require you to return it AND they permit you to trade in mailed DVDs for one in the store).

As for older movies, they have that thought out too - the internal rows have movies with their spines facing out - mostly. Even here, they have one or two DVDs on each shelf that are face front, just to help move along the type of person who can never make his own choice.

Sneaky, isn’t it? It makes me wonder if we should outsource the CIA’s job to them…

Google invited some Adwords members to test out Google TV Ads Beta, which lets advertisers upload or mail a 15, 30, 45, or 60 second TV ad to be run on regular TV sets.

This development comes after Google entered the newspaper ad placement and radio ad placement business, and is the natural next step.

Here are some important notes about the TV ad industry before I jump into the features  of Google’s new system.

TV Industry Info

• TV has 98% reach in the USA
• Over 112 million households watch TV
• The TV ad business is a $26.9 billion industry

Features

What is incredibly useful so far, is Google’s measurement tools, which help you reveal the behavior of your consumers. Google will:

• show you how many impressions were shown (1 impression here means 1 view per screen).
• let you choose a CPM rate to bid against other ads in that slot.
• let you run national, local, or demographic based TV campaigns.
• schedule ads based on day, time, and network.
• estimate how many people tuned in to the ad.
• tell you how long viewers watched the ad for on average
• show you what point in your ad you lost most viewers.

The last part is incredibly useful, because you can now test TV ads (or even video ads that would normally run online) to see if there is a “disconnect”, or a moment in your ad that was either offensive, irrelevant, or extraneous, and should be modified or deleted.

Screenshot from Google TV Ads Beta

Google uses the second-by-second set top box stats in order to find out precisely when people stopped watching an ad. You can essentially use this new feature as market research before running a full campaign.

Screenshot from Google TV Ads Beta

See More: You can see a full slide show with audio here.

What to expect in the TV industry

We can expect advertisers who never thought of advertising on TV rushing to try this out, while veteran advertisers on TV, such as Pepsi, will likely cut their ad spend, since they have an easier way to discover which ads aren’t working and would be able to turn off those ads or go back to the drawing board and come up with a better ad.

Changing the creative process
Another byproduct of Google’s TV Ads system will be much more scrutiny on TV shows by TV networks executives who will now have ways to prove what works and what doesn’t in the shows, and are likely to hijack the “creative process” in order to match and cater to the reality they see in their own stat checks using Google’s statistics.

Spam…on TV
With tons of advertisers suddenly having the option to advertise on TV, we’ll see a lot more unprofessional ads, and some inevitable blunders by confused first-time advertisers. This will in turn lower the quality of the network and the show the ad appears during, and at the same time dilute the special status of TV as being an “all professional zone”, which made it harder for people to miss watching it.

The reason why you watch more TV than YouTube is simple: YouTube has some professional video, but it has a ton of non-professional videos, many with terrible resolution, inadequate planning and designing, and all around “crap”. TV you are at least guaranteed to have several paid people working on every show in great resolution, and accountable to advertisers.

This is going to blur the difference I described above, and I foresee potential in the future for Google (which owns YouTube) to permit content producers from YouTube pay to have their show appear on regular TV networks, in exchange for a percentage of ad profits run during their show. This would lead to my next point.

TV: By the people, for the people
Democratization of what we see on TV would start occurring, since the number and diversity of advertisers will go way up. TV would lessen as a projection of what we “should be like” (hint, shows like The OC), and will start reflecting what we actually are like. This will lead to the creation of a true Long Tail effect for shows, spurred by the long tail of advertisers that will now be able to advertise easily from their Adwords account.

GraTeeVee
The very thought of appearing before so many people in one shot is very powerful. It will let people who do things just for attention to have a mouthpiece without much work. We all know the behavior of “graffiti to expand to fit the allotted wall space” (OK, I admit, I just created that saying) , and it is only a matter of time before someone will try to vandalize regular TV shows with obscene messages that go unnoticed (think “wardrobe malfunction“).

Politics
And, lest we forget, it is 2008 (an election year, for those of you who avoid media like the plague), so we can surely expect all sorts of TV ads run by supporters of the candidates, as well as haters of those candidates…TV is about to get much more political folks.

One thing’s for sure…TV will never be the same, and the industry that has fought change for so long is about to be in for a big surprise.

Any thoughts? comments? Add your thoughts below!

As an avid movie watcher, I have had my share of instances where Blockbuster forgot to unlock a DVD case for me. Now, I don’t know about you, but the only thing more frustrating than taking out a bad movie, is taking out a bad movie that you can’t even watch - because it’s case is locked. After the last time this happened, I figured out a way to open it with a corkscrew (desperation breeds ingenuity).

I have not tried this with any other DVD case locks (there are a few kinds), but the basic idea of the locks is a long plastic strip that binds the opening of the DVD. Usually Blockbuster employees remember to unlock it using an opener, but a corkscrew can do the job (although it will ruin the lock).

First, turn the DVD case so that the bottom faces up. Next, twist the plastic several times until the top part falls off, exposing the inner plastic strip (it should be hollow).

Now, take the corkscrew (a cheap, simple one will do) and pretend you are uncorking a wine bottle by twisting the corkscrew until you reach under one of the side holes in the strip.

Then make sure the sharp part of the corkscrew goes through the hole, and yank out the strip. It will likely take 2 to 3 times trying to get the strip to come right out.

Voila, you are ready to watch the movie, just grab some popcorn!

For more reading on other types of DVD locks, see Engadget’s post about hacking DVD locks.

Have you had similar issues with DVD rentals in the past? If so, how did you solve them?

How did he manage, despite all of the challenges, to build up one of the largest dealer groups in America today? Rick swears by his 10 Keys to Success:

1. Optimism. Think positive.
2. Faith. Believe in yourself, God and your country.
3. Planning. Know what’s important each day; set your priorities accordingly.
4. Determination. Have the courage to stand alone when taking the big risks in life.
5. Vision. Think big, dream big, keep success in your mind.
6. Attitude. If you think you can’t, you’re right. Winners have positive attitudes.
7. Goals. Set goals. Plan how to achieve them.
8. Perseverance. Try and try again until the goal is achieved. Never give up.
9. Knowledge. Learn to accept your mistakes, but make them only once.
10. Enthusiasm. Choose work you like. Enjoy the challenges.

Isn’t it great when successful people share their secret formula? I always like reading about other’s success stories, you never know when someone else has a great idea that can be added to your personal success list.

Success doesn’t just have to be defined by money, or your career; for example, there are plenty of successful mothers who raised wonderful children. To them, the definition of success might be very different than a CEO who just got a big deal signed.

A great way to check if you are lining yourself up for success is to print up this list of keys to success, post it on your wall, and take a look at it weekly or monthly. It will keep you motivated and on your path to success.

Are there any traits you feel Rick left out? I’d love to hear about it, in the comments below!

I know what you did last week (assuming you don’t live under a rock). If you were one of the millions who watched the Super Bowl this past Sunday, you more than likely were wondering what some advertisers must have been thinking (ahem, SalesGenie) to run a certain ad.

Well, your humble host wondered the same thing, and set out to find the truth about what a company can expect out of a Super Bowl appearance.Interestingly, once a company advertises on the Super Bowl, they find it very hard to do without it the next year. It’s almost like a drug habit. Partially because they become part of the tradition of that memorable time (think Bud Light ads), and partially because they want to believe their investment the previous year was a wise one.

Factors behind success

Each company’s ad(s) can be examined from 4 different factors to determine if it was successful, and we can use these factors to attempt to define the value of the ad. Those factors are:

• Did the ad raise buzz? (blog posts, search trends, etc.)
• Did it drive interest in information? (visitors to the site)
• Did the company prepare for the buzz and interest? (did they prepare special landing pages, behind the scenes of the ads (like Ford’s F150 commercial), etc.)
• Did the company have a call to action? (did they ask for purchase, personal info, emails, offer something)

GoDaddy.com

Bob Parsons, CEO of GoDaddy, has always maintained that their Super Bowl ads paid off. In 2005, GoDaddy spent half of its entire year’s ad budget and ran a commercial during the Super Bowl that stirred a lot of controversy - and one week later their market share for domain names increased by 56%. The two video ads archived on GoDaddy’s site were deluged with over 2.6 million views, not counting YouTube and any of the other video sites displaying it as well. Over 60,000 votes were cast for their ad on FoxSports.com, earning the top ad spot. Naturally, Parsons kept running ads each year at the Super Bowl. IAG Research reported that GoDaddy’s 2007 Super Bowl ad had the highest recall of any ad during the year.

Because of the media attention our ad has received, millions of people across the country who didn’t know we existed, are now aware of GoDaddy.com
- Bob Parsons, CEO, GoDaddy.com

4 Types of Super Bowl ads

Raise Awareness

Certainly, for relatively unknown companies in the mainstream world, the Super Bowl presents a unique opportunity to raise awareness. GoDaddy and SalesGenie are two examples of previously unknown companies in the mainstream who instantly raised awareness of ordinary folks by throwing up their ad in front of almost 100 million viewers.

Change Perception

Other companies, already firmly established in the mainstream mindset in a certain positioning, run ads to change the way you feel about a brand. A great example of this was Hyundai’s “Think About It” campaign, focused on changing your likely perception of Hyundai as a cheap, ugly car.

Culture

The third type of ad is aimed at taking advantage of your state of mind and emotion and fusing it with an ad, to the point where it is a part of the landscape. Just as you are used to seeing hot dogs at a baseball game (you would actually feel like something is missing if they weren’t there), an ad can have the same effect when it is repeatedly shown and branded during the Super Bowl. For example, if you see Bud Light ads during every Super Bowl for several years, two things end up happening; first, you begin to associate the culture of Super Bowl with “a good cold beer”, and second, you are always being presented with the ad during a time of high emotion and high attention (which lead to better memory) .

Authority

And lastly, the fourth type of ad is often combined with one of the previous types and focuses on authority. Given that the Super Bowl is the largest event of the year, if you are advertising on it that means you are “made”, you are the “real deal”. This is an intimidation tactic for your competitors, and a “we’ve made it to the big time business” notice to prospective customers who weren’t sure about your company’s credibility.

Length of ad

After going over all of the ads and their rankings, I should note that as far as likability and recall ability, the longer the ad, the better chance it had of showing up at the top on both. The typical spot is 30 seconds, but the 60 second and 45 second spots scored disproportionately better than the rest. My best guess as to the reasoning behind this (and please add a comment if you had a different thought) is that the longer ads had more of a chance to communicate the setting, leading to a more cohesive message, and the longer ads also were simply shown for longer amounts of time (in some cases twice as long as a common 30 second spot), so one would expect that these ads have better recall, if not twice as much.

Additional value

Aside from the actual ad viewers during the Super Bowl and on video sharing websites later, there are yet even more ways to squeeze out value from your ad.

a) GoDaddy posted rejected ads on their site. This way, no ad production time that they paid for was wasted - it was efficiently converted into more eye-grabbing content for entertainment hungry consumers.

b) Due to the immense press coverage and significance of the Super Bowl, your ad might be selected to win an award, such as USA Today’s Ad Meter contest, which brings in even more press. For example, in 2008’s Super Bowl, IAG Research reported FedEx’s Pigeon commercial as the most recalled ad.

c) Use a survey on your site to learn more about your customers. For example, in 2008 over 160,000 visitors to GoDaddy’s Super Bowl ad page filled out a survey.

d) Tivo actually keeps track of which ads get replayed most often. This year, the E*Trade Talking, Trading, Barfing Baby commercial was the most replayed ad, signifying a high level of interest. In fact, almost all ads had a 5-30% larger audience than the game itself, which gives credibility to the common wisdom that “most people watch the Super Bowl for the ads, not the game itself”.

A battleground

Often, when two brands are fighting to obtain dominance in a category, they advertise on the Super Bowl (sometimes head to head) in the hopes of gaining enough momentum and awareness to pull ahead of the other. Netflix and Blockbuster’s struggles were a great example of this strategy.

Netflix vs. Blockbuster

A few years ago, when it was uncertain to executives in Netflix and BlockBuster offices who would win the online rental battle, they each spent millions running ads during Super Bowl to introduce their service to millions of viewers, and to try to capture growth for their service. Now that Netflix has beaten out Blockbuster Online, with 7.5 million subscribers to a paltry 3.1 million (the last available statistics), they no longer see any reason to spend exorbitantly on Super Bowl ads. Since both companies are investing heavily in movie downloads for this upcoming year, we may see some ads for that new service as they push the new product into a state of high consumer awareness.

Failure of the last mile

Too often we find advertisers who spent an enormous amount on advertising, but didn’t craft a plan of what would happen after they got people interested. This year was no different, and I found quite a few advertisers who paid a lot and worked hard to get visitors to their site, and then lost them out of confusion, or lacking the content the visitor was looking for. There were, in many cases, no landing page, no call to action, no additional content. In the cases where these existed, they were usually not prominent enough, or completely hidden without a google search.

Audi did a great job with their Truth In Engineering site, which has the consistent message and feel that the Super Bowl ad had. It invites you to learn more about the Audi R8. While Ford did put in a small web address in their ad, if you just wend to Ford’s main site (as I’m sure many did), you didn’t even see a mention of the truck, the Super Bowl, or the ad. That is a failure of the last mile.

Pay per click advertising

This year, the pay per click bidding really heated up between Super Bowl advertisers. Most advertisers were trying to draw attention even after the game to their ad (instead of a competitor’s ad) by buying up pay per click ads on Google, MSN and Yahoo search engines.

Audience

Gender

Most people don’t know that the audience for the Super Bowl is actually split evenly between males and females. This means that ads that attract both sexes will be more successful, and we can derive a formula for success. The idea is to mix something that females will say “aww, that’s so sweet”(usually a furry creature, baby, dramatic moment) to with something that males will enjoy (usually violence, toilet humor, sophomoric humor). This gives each gender something to focus on and relate to in the ad, and drives recall and liking of the ad.

Quantity

It would be pretty rare that someone watches the Super Bowl alone. Usually, you watch in a group and as become tradition in America, the host holds a “Super Bowl Party”. Given that information, ads that take advantage of the quantity of people watching in any one location will succeed much better than ones that don’t take that factor into account. Take, for example, movie ads. Very few people go to see movies alone, and even fewer go to see big hits alone (usually out of embarrassment). And, how many times have we each gone to a movie, one we didn’t even want to see, purely because a friend asked us to? You’re grinning right now, because it’s happened to you before. All it takes is one person in the group that is watching saying “We’ve GOT to see that movie!”, and he has already raised the likelihood that 4-6 other people will see it as well.

Atmosphere

Marketing messages need to match the emotional state of the people they are targeting. Super Bowl parties are filled with loud people (often drinking), lots of food, include many shouts of joy and grief, and are usually an excuse to hang out with people you don’t see every week. As such, advertising for something very serious, or very sad, is not likely to even be noticed or recalled after the event. Consider this: You don’t remember every little thing that happened to you last week, but if I ask you whether it was a good week or not, you do remember that. Say you had a good week. If I follow up and ask you whether someone insulted you during that week, chances are you won’t remember, because you are already defining that whole week simply as “good” in your brain.

The numbers

Now, don’t forget to add the cost to produce an ad - up to $1 million if you want an agency.

GoDaddy as an example of cost effectiveness of placing a Super Bowl ad:

2007: GoDaddy received 0.5 million visitors day of Super Bowl (3 paid spots) @ $2.6MM each = $15.60 per visitor
2008: GoDaddy received 2 million visitors day of Super Bowl (1 paid spot) @ 2.7MM each = $1.35 per visitor

Now, if you were thinking that visitors don’t equal buyers: Melanie Schmitt, of GoDaddy, indicated that “early indications show our market share of new domain names is fast approaching 50% - up from its pre-Super Bowl mark of 42%.” That’s quite impressive, considering it is just one week later.

Clearly 2008 was a year of better return on investment for GoDaddy. It is possible that running several ads instead of one doesn’t have a high enough marginal boost in visitors to justify the additional spend.

Note: GoDaddy did experience a higher amount of visitors on the days that follow (more than 5 million visitors for this year’s ad since Sunday, but for matters of simplicity we only analyzed the day of the Super Bowl.

Movie Ads

This year saw about 10 different movie ads, more than I recall viewing any past year. That usually means:

a) They found that it worked in the past; or
b) They are having a really bad year

Which brings us to the question, how do these ads do?

This is a hard question to answer, since so many of the ads were running for movies that don’t come out for a very long time. We measured the release dates for each movie ad, and found the shortest release date was 11 days from the Super Bowl, while the longest were two movies being released 145 days later. Interestingly, not a single movie ad was shown for any movies currently in the theater, which could have resulted in immediate action (i.e. - going to see the movie the next Sunday). Also, what are the odds of someone recalling a movie a whopping 145 days later? That’s almost 5 months down the road. I suppose the only way to make it stick would be to have a huge ad budget for all 5 months to make sure the viewers memory of your ad doesn’t fail during that time.

When you are expecting your movie to make over 100 million, I guess spending a few more to make sure that it has a big opening week is just “insurance”.

Lastly, not a single one of the movie ads made it into the top of the ratings for the Super Bowl ads. Isn’t that strange, considering movies have:

a) the largest budget
b) the most film to use
c) well-known actors
d) the most professional producers

It’s possible that people just aren’t in the right mood for movies during the Super Bowl, or maybe the studios are just counting on the “Quantity” principle I noted a few paragraphs up.

Avoid the taboos

When you try to be edgy and entertaining, you often straddle the line between offensive and inoffensive. Last year, GM ran an ad showing an auto assembly plant robot committing suicide because it made a single work mistake. GM wanted to show its commitment to excellent in a funny way. They failed. It looked like they were glorifying suicide. To make matters worse, this ran during the same time that GM was laying off thousands of workers - not exactly the greatest timing. The ad was pulled after people saw it on the Super Bowl and complained. This year was no different, with Vin Gupta, SalesGenie’s CEO, apologizing for two ads that came under fire as offensive. Gupta, an Indian himself, said:

“We never thought anyone would be offended,” said Mr. Gupta, who developed and wrote both commercials himself.

As I’ve said before, having several different perspectives, with at least one “extreme outsider” on your management team is important. It prevents you from doing what SalesGenie did, and turning something supposed to be positive and morphing it into a very negative force.

The use of celebrities

It seems that each year more and more celebrities find a way into the Super Bowl ads. Is this a good thing? Does it help the ad succeed? It’s hard to tell, and there is no clear answer. On the one hand, celebrities are recognized immediately and can already pass on some context to the viewer without spending additional time in the ad (which, at slightly under $100,000 per second, becomes a high priority). For example, Will Ferrell appeared in a Bud Light commercial. From what most people know about him, he’s a funny actor who is always in silly situations. See? We just saved at least 10 seconds of explanation just by showing him instead of a random unknown person.

The downside, of course, is the cost of hiring the actor, as well as a possible negative backlash from either current events involved with that actor (is it just me or do they tend to get into trouble really often?), or by people who may already have a strong negative view of that person. For instance, Will Ferrell is a polarizing character, as my focus group showed. Some people found his Bud Light commercial hilariously funny, while others were just plain disgusted and turned off by it - simply because of who he is. With a nameless actor that shouldn’t happen - it’s hard to hate someone you don’t know yet.

Conclusion

Each year, repeat Super Bowl advertisers are getting smarter and improving their results. This is clearly a game that you need to know the intricacies in order to succeed, and it also hinges on your ability to intertwine your company within the culture and tradition of the Super Bowl. Companies such as Coca Cola and Budweiser have succeeded, and it seems that running a Super Bowl ad was the single best move GoDaddy ever did. Additionally, each year brings more detailed plans for rolling out the Super Bowl ads, with landing pages, pay per click advertising, behind the scenes videos, and so on becoming the standard for competing for interested viewers. It is my hope that I succeeded in presenting dimensions of the Super Bowl ad economy that you haven’t considered in the past, and offered you an inside look, making you a more sophisticated Super Bowl ad viewer!

The Super Bowl was a great game, but, given my profession, I paid a bit more attention to the ads, seen by over 97.5 million fans- the most ever. You may recall my review of Super Bowl 2007 Ads last year. 30 second spots cost about 7% more this year, averaging $2.7 million a piece. Overall, I think last year was a better year for the ads, and I was actually a bit disappointed with some companies this year. Which ads succeeded, and whose flopped? I tell all, below.

This year’s Super Bowl XLII ads included many familiar themes: Furry creatures, attractive women, celebrities in silly situations, new product introductions and a complete exaggeration of reality. I tried to categorize most ads by the style they went for, and evaluate how successful they were in producing the intended effect. Some ads tried to combine several of these styles, but they were generally less impressive in those cases. There were:

• Funny Ads
• Wow Factor (special effects - how did they do that!?!)
• Sexy
• Artistic
• Americana

The Winners

Doritos - “mouse trap” - The entire allure of this commercial is just the shock value and violence…I don’t want to spoil it if you haven’t seen it yet. Silly, simple, and totally successful.
Watch | Effects in use: Funny (violence & furry creatures)

Tide To Go - “silence the stain” - This was unbelievably funny, great acting, and all around creative idea. A guy goes on an interview for a job and instead of his potential employer hearing about his qualifications we see the stain talking and disrupting. This was also a very creative way to target males for a traditionally non-male task (stain removal), as one of my focus group females pointed out.
Watch | Effects in use: Funny, Wow Factor (talking stain)

Fedex - “carrier pigeons” - A worker has been experimenting with new ways to send packages - massive carrier pigeons. Unfortunately, they are still in beta, and packages are dropped all over city streets, cars go flying, and it ends up looking like an ad for Birdzilla or something. The idea was very creative, and passes on the message of FedEx being reliable.
Watch | Effects in use: Funny, Wow Factor

E*Trade - “Baby” - Two ads about a baby who invests in the stock market, makes a bunch of cash, hires a clown, and throws up. You’ve got to see it to appreciate it.
Watch, 2 | Effects in use: Funny

Bridgestone - “Unexpected Obstacles” - A driver avoids a deer, Alice Cooper, and finally Richard Simmons (although not before considering mowing him down) using his Bridgestone tires. This was great just because who wouldn’t want to run over Richard Simmons after having him around for a few minutes? The second spot was not as impressive, but still funny (and featured furry creatures).
Watch, 2 | Effects in use: Funny

Bud Light - “Wheel Suck” - See below for full coverage.

The Losers

SalesGenie.com - Sorry, both ads were competing with each other for the absolute worst spot. I couldn’t decide which, so I’m letting them both bask in the glory of failure. One had a Genie, the other one had a Panda - both were animated and stupid.
Watch, 2 | Effects in use: Lack of Intelligence

GoDaddy.com - As usual, a terrible ad, but I’m sure they will still drive a ton of traffic to their site, just as they did the past few years.

SunSilk - Celebrity singers and some artistic attempt at relevance - even the women in my group didn’t appreciate it.

UnderArmour - Athletic wear brand ad had bad acting, bad script, and mediocre effects.

The Just Plain Strange

Planters - “Perfume” - What do you get when you mix a unibrow, a girl and a cashew? We’re not quite sure, and I don’t think too many other people were either. I don’t know if Planters is planning some product line expansion, and I didn’t know whether to be disgusted, laugh, or what…
Watch | Effects in use: Funny

CareerBuilder.com - “Queen of Hearts” & “Firefly” - Just as gross and violent as last year’s ads from CareerBuilder, all aimed at getting you to seek a better job. I almost threw up on the Queen of Hearts one, since they ran it while I was eating…
Watch, 2 | Effects in use: Funny (violence), Wow Factor

Cars.com - “Stone Circle” & “Witch Doctor” - These featured “Plan B”, what car shoppers should do if they don’t feel they were dealt with appropriately, from getting a witch doctor to shrink the salesman’s head, to Glondoor and his circle of fire wrestling match. These might have been good, if not for being so darn weird…
Watch, 2 | Effects in use: Funny (violence), Wow Factor

Bud Light / Budweiser

Blowing Fire - Bud Light showed off a very funny ad with a man and woman on a date, and after drinking Bud Light he can breathe fire, which helps him light two candles for the romantic setting. The problem arises when her cat shows up and he happens to be allergic to it. Before you know it, half the house is on fire. This was funny, but not the best.
Watch | Effects in use: Funny, Wow Factor (fire breath)

Ability To Fly - Part of the same series as Blowing Fire, you see a man flying holding a Bud Light, only to be sucked into the jet engine of a plane. The voice-over then says “the ability of flight no longer available, but the refreshing taste is”. This was a very entertaining ad, but only as part of the series.
Watch | Effects in use: Funny

Wheel Suck - The setting is the days of cavemen, and one brilliant caveman invents the wheel to help them transport Bud Light. The problem is, instead of rolling the wheel, the carry it like a disk, with the Bud Light on top, and we hear a caveman grumble “wheel suck!” on the way. The closing scene has a great followup - you see a caveman crush a beer bottle with a heavy rock, to which he reacts by grumbling “bottle opener suck!”. I think this was the best Bud Light commercial, and competes with a few others for the top commercial of the whole night.
Watch | Effects in use: Funny

Language of Love - Carlos Mencia teaches some foreigners how to pick up women, only to have it backfire on him when an attractive woman is already taken by a short Indian fellow. It was clever, but not the winner of the night.
Watch | Effects in use: Funny

Wine & Cheese Party, Will Ferrell - These two ads were poor attempts to make viewers laugh. I guess when you run as many ads as Bud Light does, you don’t focus on quality…

Drinks

Pepsi

Diet Pepsi Max - Played to the soundtrack “What is love”, people are nodding off to sleep everywhere, from sportscast booths to ranchers on horses. Alas, after only a sip of Diet Pepsi Max, they are energetic and bouncing their heads to the rhythm. This was really very amusing, and the “focus group” I was with was laughing quite hard.
Watch | Effects in use: Funny

Magnetic Attraction - Justin Timberlake is magnetically pulled through a town, crashing into many things on the way, including a particularly painful mail box post. This was a very creative idea, and while it played to the fact that men apparently enjoy watching other men get hit in the groin more than women, it was still hilarious. Everyone I sat with couldn’t stop laughing for a minute. They really tied it all together well at the end with the phrase “every sip gets you closer to Justin Timberlake MP3s, CDs…”.
Watch | Effects in use: Funny

Gatorade

G2 & Gatorade - These were two ads which simply missed the mark. One was with Derek Jeter walking and a “baseball field” appearing under his feet with each step (nice effect, but that’s about it), and the other involved a dog drinking Gatorade. I will say that it was smart to have a New Yorker star in a commercial in a year where there was likely to be more New Yorkers watching the Super Bowl than ever before, I just wish they would have put a bit more effort into the actual ad.

Coca Cola

It’s Mine - Thanksgiving Day parade balloon characters fight with each other to get the Coca Cola balloon, and eventually Charlie Brown gets it. Stewie from Family Guy is one of the balloons, and this had a very “All American” feel to it, reminding Americans that Coca Cola is patriotic.
Watch | Effects in use: Funny, Americana

Jinx - James Carville and Bill Frist frolick around the capital of the US together, apparently under spell from sharing Coca Cola. It wasn’t terribly funny, although I guess some of the election nuts out there might appreciate it.
Watch | Effects in use: Funny, Americana

AMP

Energy Jumpstart - This was a great commercial. The scene has a tow truck guy pull up, place jumper cables on his nipples and the lady’s car, and try to jump start it. When that doesn’t work, he drinks some AMP, and that gives him enough energy to start the car. This was well done, creative idea, and gets the point across with high imagery. There was another one in the series with Dale Earnhardt, Jr. carrying a camel across the desert with the same general idea.
Watch, 2 | Effects in use: Funny

Sobe

Thrillicious - Sobe lizards and Naomi Campbell share a “Life Water” drink and then start dancing to Michael Jackson’s thriller. The lizards reminded me of the Geico lizard for some reason, which confused the message a bit. Overall, it was a neat effect, but nothing great.
Watch | Effects in use: Wow Factor

Vitamin Water

Horsin’ Around With Shaq - Shaq rides a tiny horse to victory after drinking Vitamin Water. I kept wondering when the horse would collapse, given Shaq’s 7′1″, 325 pound frame. Not terribly amazing, but just funny to see Shaq on a tiny horse.
Watch | Effects in use: Funny, Wow Factor

Car Ads

Ford

Built Ford Tough - A Ford pickup was shown being swung around in a centrifuge, to convey the strength of the truck’s tow hooks (and by extension, the rest of the truck). The effect was neat, but that’s about it. My favorite part of the commercial is the small disclaimer stating “do not attempt” (as if I have a centrifuge just hanging around my back yard large enough to…).
Watch | Effects in use: Wow Factor

Ford Edge - One spot with Derek Jeter which really didn’t impress me, and two spots that looked like normal boring car ads which is a bad thing to waste money on even when it isn’t the Super Bowl. Ford really dropped the ball here…did they spend so much on the spot that they didn’t have any budget left for making a quality commercial?
Effects in use: Wow Factor

Audi

Godfather - “Old luxury has just been put on notice”. Audi introduced the Audi R8, one of the slickest sports cars I’ve seen in a while. With a price over $109,000, Audi no doubt wanted to reach the wealthy, middle age audience. They recreated a scene from the Godfather movie (the one where an old man wakes up with a horse head on his bed, covered in blood), and then had the R8 speed away in an impressive effect. The spot leaves you breathless mostly because of how classy the car appears.
Watch | Effects in use: Wow Factor, with a touch of Americana

Hyundai

Genesis - The Hyundai Genesis ads introduce a new luxury car with 375 horsepower as part of its recent “Think About It” campaign, which tries to get viewers to rethink how they view Hyundai (I personally think they are some of the ugliest and most useless cars out there- at least until I saw the Genesis). The ad shows the Genesis riding on a mountainside road and compares it to a Mercedes and BMW. My favorite part is when the ad says “you are probably expecting a twist” making you think they were referring to the road, and then surprises you by showing a Hyundai logo (as if admitting that Hyundai cars are junk). Sometimes admitting faults is the only way to connect with customers who have sworn off your product. This was a solid commercial, well done Hyundai.
Watch, 2 | Effects in use: Artistic, makes great use of sound, lighting, dramatic effect

Toyota

Corolla - Toyota rolled out one of the funniest ads of the night. In the spot, an average Joe is placed in a Corolla, touting its quiet interior. The only problem is, there are ferocious badgers sleeping who will attack him if they are woken up. While he survives the blast of a cannon outside the car, it’s his cell phone ringing in his pocket that causes trouble.
Watch | Effects in use: Funny (using furry creatures and violence)

Sequoia - This spot was not special, and just showed a bunch of kids having fun and then piling into the SUV. Been there, done that. Where was this agency during the late nineties (when all the other SUV ads were doing this)?

Cadillac

Escalade / CTS 2008 - “When you turn it on, does it return the favor?” - This spot features sexy Kate Walsh driving the all-new Cadillac CTS 2008 and speaking in a soft voice. It was a nice spot, though not amazing. The second spot is similar, but features a guy with the Escalade. Cadillac is trying to make their cars appear to be not only luxurious on the inside, but also thrilling to drive. We’ll see if the public buys that.
Watch, 2 | Effects in use: Sexy

GMC

Yukon Hybrid - “Never say never” - GMC shows a sketched man rolling a ball up a hill, struggling. For the first half of the commercial it actually looked like an ad the Oppenheimer Funds might run. The tone of the commercial makes you feel like they are patting themselves on the back for creating a hybrid SUV (didn’t some other brands do this already)? I guess the never say never slogan comes in handy - we never did expect GMC to get their act together, but I guess late is better than never.
Watch | Effects in use: Artistic

Acura

MDX - A few years ago, Acura introduced the MDX with some amazing sound and image. How sad is it that they spent millions for the spot in the Super Bowl, only to make a very mediocre ad, without any memorable music, and without exhilarating video. The ad focused on some obscure feature in the Acura MDX to monitor and adjust heating based on where the sun is…I’m not sure we were all worrying about that “problem”.
Watch | Effects in use: Artistic

So there’s my take folks. Want to voice your opinion on anything? By all means, please do add in your two cents in the comments.

I went into ShopRite, my favorite supermarket, to go food shopping. Walking around, I noticed a price label for 32 oz. of Norwegian Salmon that was surprising - $2.99 (after Price Plus card discount). Excited, since this item usually costs $20.53 for just one pound, I looked around for the right package, only to find that none existed. It was then that I realized they made a labeling error, and guessed that all of them were bought up already by someone with a sharp eye.

Aware of the law in New Jersey, which requires stores to mark each item with a price and sell it for that price, I went to the customer service desk to ask for a rain check for four of them (the limit of offers per person). Now, I like to think of myself as a nice fellow, so I invited a bystander in the aisle to join me for a rain check as well.

The customer service person who was working there tried several times to “dump” the issue on someone else in the store (a common tactic to avoid responsibility), but no one working there had any clue what to do. Finally, he asked me to get the label for him to look at. In a flash, I was back at the customer service desk with the label, and a knowing look came over his face. Although he didn’t mention that they messed up on the pricing, when I asked him if he would like me to return the label to its proper place, he offered an unfriendly “no”. He obviously didn’t want to put that firehouse sale back on the shopping floor.

I shop there every week. Once in a while it’s a nice feeling to know that there are some perks to that loyalty (like a chance of finding a great unintended deal). Way to go ShopRite, but don’t give me a hard time when you make a mistake - it ruins that feeling.