Super Bowl 2008: The Winning Brands
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Written By Sepideh Saremi | February 5, 2008 | Share This
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Yesterday we released the Reprise Media 2008 Super Bowl Search Marketing Scorecard, our annual look at the big game’s advertisers, and we outlined here the top-line Scorecard takeaways. Today we’ll take a closer look at the top three winning advertisers, with a review of what they did to effectively integrate search into their TV strategy.
We examined four categories of criteria this year: the actual TV ad, paid search, landing pages, and social media presence. (I should note here that social media was a new addition, and I’ll go into further detail in another post about this soon.) An advertiser’s integration of these four elements determined the Scorecard rankings, and we gave props to consistent cross-channel messaging, targeted keyword buys, compelling calls to action, relevant landing pages, and presence on social media sites.
So without further ado, this year’s winners are Pepsi, GoDaddy, and Cars.com. Here’s the breakdown:
- Pepsi
Super Bowl ad veteran Pepsi dialed up its online game this year. The company’s clever TV ad featured the (literally) magnetic Justin Timberlake in an Amazon/Pepsi Stuff promotion. Pepsi called out PepsiStuff.com at the end of the ad, and ran Super Bowl-specific paid search ads that led to that landing page. What’s more, the landing page referenced the Super Bowl and featured the ad, tying together all the messaging. Though they didn’t call out their social media presence on TV, Pepsi did well by posting the ad on its branded YouTube channel, where it has received more than 200,000 views and over 80 comments so far.
- Go Daddy
Go Daddy has consistently turned network objections to its ad content into spectacular buzz (and it doesn’t hurt that their ads rely on beautiful young women and double entendre). This year’s ad involved race car driver Danica Patrick, and just like last year, Go Daddy’s ad was actually a teaser for the “real” censored ad on their website, giving users a big reason to visit. Their search ads were on-message, their landing page relevant, and they also uploaded other rejected ads on their YouTube channel. So it’s no surprise that this is the fourth year in a row that the domain registrar/web host landed a spot among our Scorecard winners.
- Cars.com
Cars.com’s ads were memorable for their freaky witch doctor and absurd voodoo motif. The company’s strategy had its strength in integrated messaging: search ads spoke specifically to TV ad content, they did a great job buying keywords around their TV concept. Cars.com also included a URL in its ad (though it would have been difficult not to - it’s in their name, after all), but they were our only winner missing a call to action. Though they were also the only winner not to include Super Bowl-related content on their social media pages (and didn’t have a corporate presence on social networks), the synergies between search and TV in their campaign were really impressive and effective, landing them squarely in third place.
In all, though their products and services are vastly different, these advertisers really understood the power of their TV spend to lead to measurable web activity, and they were able to deliver strong cross-platform campaigns as a result.
Tune in tomorrow for our post on the Scorecard’s losers and missed opportunities. And if you can’t wait to find out who those brands are, download the full Scorecard now.
Topics: Advertising: Online, Search Marketing Scorecard |