Super Bowl Ads Still Lack Social Media Marketing Success (Mostly)

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Thanks to everyone who participated in our live, interactive Super Bowl Commercial Rating Party in partnership with TheTVNews.tv, the TV industry’s only daily video newscast. (Watch this space and TheTVNews.tv for details on our Oscars Party.)

Reprise Media Search Marketing Scorecard on Super BowlBy way of follow up, Jeff and I did a segment on tomorrow, Wednesday 2/10’s show (my New Media / New Marketing starts at 2:50) discussing my view of the winner and loser Super Bowl advertisers in terms of social media marketing. We referenced Reprise Media’s Search Marketing Scorecard on the Super Bowl (a free PDF download) which points out a surprising fact: While 93% of the advertisers—who shelled out a reported average of $2.6 million for each spot—do have an official Facebook profile, (get this) only 5% promoted their social profiles in order to leverage or take better advantage of their massive investment (a.k.a. marketing expense).

The single biggest social media marketing loser was Denny’s. Here’s the link to Crush It!: Why NOW Is the Time to Cash In on Your Passion author, Gary Vaynerchuk’s rant about how Denny’s missed the boat with their multi-million dollar expense. Gary is totally right. Why not use an incentive like a free breakfast to capture customer information and build a platform for better engagement? Duh!

The viral marketing buzz winner was the Audi Green Police spot below which got the most Twitter buzz according to Trendrr (via a chart referenced in the Repris Media report):

Bonus Category: My “nominee” for the Super Bowl TV spot with “Best Script,” at least the script that hit closest to home for me had to be this creative “Man’s Last Stand” spot for Dodge Charger:

Too bad I don’t relate better to the product. 😉

Bonus Just for Fun Video Link: Business Insider’s 10 Best Tech Super Bowl Ads Ever

Bonus Link #2: USA Today’s Super Bowl “Ad Meter” (pretty slick, including green screen video intro)

As always, your comments, suggestions, rants, and any other insights you care to offer are welcome via the comments space below. I look forward to hearing from you.

TV Industry News, Talkin’ New Media, part 2

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I’m continuing to have fun as a video contributor and New Media / New Marketing expert on TheTVNews.tv. Today was the “world premiere” of what will now be a weekly appearance every Tuesday and more. I wrote a press release for the occasion, “New Media / New Marketing Consultant Joins the TV industry’s Only Daily News Show with Weekly Segment.”

This press release also introduces the “Super Bowl Commercial Rating Party” which will be offered via Twitter and Facebook during the big game. FYI, we’re still looking for peeps with TV industry creds and experience. If you’re interested in being part of our Twitter list of luminaries, please give me a virtual “shout out.” Here’s today’s show. All feedback and suggestions are welcome. Thanks!

Leading with Value: The Currency of New Marketing

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In my keynotes and workshops on internet marketing (which I am hereby referring to as “new marketing”), one of my key concepts is “leading with value.” For me, a key part of business in general is creating (and maintaining) relationships. Of course, business is about much more than just making money. But, in this culture, that’s easy to forget. My real bottom line is the fact that the quality of the relationships that I have created via my business are perhaps the greatest source of satisfaction that I have in my work (right up there with the creative satisfaction and opportunity to make a difference).

For this reason, I am particularly enthusiastic about the authentic aspects of social media that literally depend upon “leading with value.” Social media is about networking, which to me means “virtually meeting” new, interesting people and learning new things from them. And, likewise, being able to easily share what I consider to be valuable information with as many people as possible. I love that. I enjoy it so much that sometimes I even think, “I was born for social media” …and I’m not even a social media “big shot.”

So along these lines, I simply want to start my Monday morning by sharing a couple of insightful blog posts that to me do a great job of underscoring some important aspects of our new media world. Hopefully, they will provide sparks for you as they have for me, so we can all go out and (like the Beatles said) “make it better”:

  • Focusing on Value: How I’m Changing How I Use Twitter
    This is one of the most substantive blog posts I’ve read in some time, and I especially like it because it addresses, in a very real and pragmatic way, how best to deal with Twitter users who spam. Bottom line, don’t auto-follow everyone back; and most importantly, un-follow all those affiliate marketers who are only trying to “capture” your dollars.
  • The Five Essential Pillars of a Social Media Campaign
    This list of values provide a foundation for social media relationship building that are, as the author says, “essential.” They include “generosity” which is very close to my “Leading with Value” concept.
  • ABC-TV News on “Marketing with Meaning”
    Yes, marketing executives are actually writing books on how marketing campaigns are more effective when they have MEANING. What a concept! Nice to see it being covered in the so-called mainstream media.

Enjoy! And keep having fun out there.

Phenomenal iPhone Photo Website + iPhone App

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The Best Camera websiteI love this. I’ve been playing around with iPhone photo editing apps for a month or two, but I just discovered Chase Jarvis’ TheBestCamera.com (as in “the best camera is the one that’s with you”) and now I’m more excited about iPhone photography than ever before.

This integrated offering has me really impressed. Not only is it probably the best iPhone photo editing app that I’ve seen; but, it’s got integrated photo sharing to Twitter and Facebook built in, plus instant uploading to a true iPhone photo community site. Get the picture? (yes, pun intended) In fact, they’ve got the Big Picture. They’ve thought this through and put together what is essentially a mobile photography platform that’s sophisticated, feature rich, supported by great user interface (online and on iPhone). Very well done.

This iPhone app has already made it onto my first page of iPhone apps… a first! In fact, I’m using it to replace Apple’s iPhone Camera app.

As far as I can tell both TheBestCamera website and Mr. Jarvis himself have really “got it going on.” I’ll let him introduce himself via the video below. The app and the site are very much worth checking out, in my humble opinion…

Major Trend Alert: Shared Links Can Trump SEO for Internet Marketing

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NYTimes "share this" imageLink sharing inspired by social networking sites like Twitter, Facebook and/or LinkedIn is nothing new. But fresh data published in Sunday’s New York Times by Brad Stone in his article, “Share The Moment And Spread the Wealth” reinforces the fact that this trend is continuing to gather momentum. It is doing so even to the extent that it has become equally important and now sits side-by-side with SEO (the historically dominant technique for building website traffic via Google) as a strategy for increasing the visibility for your website.

This underscores the powerful points made by some of my favorite thought leaders. Whether you call it building your “Tribe” as Seth Godin does or creating a “World Wide Rave” as David Meerman Scott articulates the opportunity, I have to say that whether you are a marketer or just a business owner, social networking has now crossed a major trend line. If you didn’t consider it essential before, now there is no doubt (at least in my mind) that social networking that encourages link sharing must now be considered a mission critical component of every company’s marketing plan.

For this reason, ComBridges’ is increasingly offering more social media marketing services in a variety of formats, including contract, consulting and even mentoring/coaching. Click here to request a free consultation.

FYI, I’m also very excited to let you know that I will be covering social media marketing and related topics in our upcoming EBiz Express Teleseminar series. Be sure to subscribe to our “It’s a Wonderful Web” enewsletter if you want to be invited. The guests/co-presenters will be awesome, and we are keeping this educational series very affordable.

Twitter Resisters Surrender!

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If you are still in the “I don’t get it” crowd in relation to the current Big Thing i.e. Twitter, you are not alone. I resisted it. Tim O’Reilly resisted it. David Letterman is still resisting it. Even Kevin Spacey can’t convince him. Just the same, the Twitter “toothpaste” is out of the tube and it’s not going back in.

So, to support your techno-enlightenment, especially if you are a business person not taking advantage of this remarkable opportunity for fun, social networking, information gathering, low budget customer service, and just plain ole marketing, I offer the following recent bites of online media in a friendly effort to get you going:

  • Our ComBridges team uses Central Desktop as “groupware” for project management and collaboration. I appreciated a blog post by one of their young associates called “Twitter for Business? Call Me Dr. Jekyll…” Although I think of this as more of a “Confessions of a Former Twitter Resister,” bottom line he makes a solid business case in a very personal way (which, by the way, is a very good thing to do online).
  • Nissan has recent launched a new website for its upcoming electric car called the Leaf. What’s interesting is that their new website is “Powered by Twitter.” Of course, this is just one example, amongst many, of serious businesses investing in Twitter for marketing and customer relationship building. Note the real time Q&A below the car stuff.
  • Darren Rowse, a.k.a. ProBlogger, who I respect, is arguably one of the most successful professional bloggers in the world, and he is also a down-to-earth, authentic thought leader. Darren has not only created another blog especially for Twitter, Twitip which is packed with great info on how to use Twitter; but he’s produced a very nice, FREE 40-minute orientation program for you which I’m embedding below.

Now, go tweet your brains out, have a great time, and market appropriately please. Thanks.