Written By Anthony Iaffaldano | February 4, 2009 | Share This |

Profile Optimization

We’re continuing our coverage of our Fifth Annual Search Marketing Scorecard, which looks at how well advertisers on this year’s Super Bowl broadcast integrated their search engine and social media marketing. Yesterday we pointed to Touchdowns… the brands that made into our top tier. As you might expect, those Touchdown scoring brands have their mirror opposites in our Fumble category – brands that blew their opportunity to integrate their Super Bowl TV spots with their search and social media marketing.

The Hall of Shame

Just as our study has produced some Hall of Famer’s - brands that have consistently integrated their campaigns across channels - there are some brands that seem to always let the ball slip through their fingers. Coca-Cola’s ad featuring insects conspiring to spirit away a bottle of soda was whimsical, and rated well in the USA Today AdMeter but when it came to tying it in with the brand’s presence online the results were quite poor. The tag line was “Open Happiness” but good luck finding the ad if you search for it. There is no paid search against the term and no social media pages set up for it.

Correction- there is an organic link titled Happiness Factory 3 that comes up first in most searches that does take you to behind the scenes info on the spot and the music. It’s a neat site but who would know that they are connected? Not the casual searcher surely. Yeah and don’t bother looking for it in Coca-Cola’s official YouTube channel – it’s not there.

Coke has done progressively worse over the last three years of our study, truly entering the Hall of Scorecard Shame.

Let’s Tie One On… I Mean In

Beer ads are practically synonymous with the Super Bowl, but they haven’t been eligible due to the fact that the major search engines have a ban on alcoholic beverage ads. Until now. Google lifted their ban (link to story?) well in advance of the Super Bowl. The response from Heineken, Budweiser, Bud Light? Nada, zip, zero.

Ironically one beer maker did make an effort to rise their foamy head to the occasion – Miller High Life garnered plenty of press and social media for their “One-Second Spot” campaign. The campaign, and the social media tie-ins – revolve around the $3 million cost of a full 30-second ad which Miller proposes to skirt by airing a series of 1-second spots. Unfortunately NBC turned down the buy which meant that Miller had to buy local in selected markets - missing out on our national ad criteria.

This is a shame as the other beer companies could learn from Miller’s lesson – search ads (which are still up) leading to a dedicated landing page, embeddable social media content and a great overarching idea that ties in the brand values and the game. We’ll know next year whether Miller High Life is a trailblazing outlier or a blip on the radar.

Integration Means Preparation

About the only thing that went right for Denny’s was that they had paid search going and they aired an ad with a great offer (free breakfast!) during the game. They were killed by the fact that they couldn’t keep their website up and running. We had one computer that was only able to get 15% of the site loaded by the end of the fourth quarter.

In light of this perhaps it’s understandable that the TV spots had no URL and no suggestion that people do what comes naturally – go to Denny’s website to find the store nearest them. People did it anyway and the result wasn’t pretty. On Monday, when these free breakfasts were actually served up, lo and behold: the site crashed again.

It’s a basic rule of thumb If you have a great offer and you are going to use paid search ads to drive traffic to it – you need to be prepared for the surge in site traffic. Denny’s was so close to getting it right but even if they had, say, done more to spread assets and interest with social media, without a loadable website the efforts landed them squarely in the Fumble category.

Even the Worst are Better

Though there were exceptions, many of our cellar dwellers at least attempted some form of integration. Some of the brands that ranked in the middle this year would have been touchdowns when we first started the survey.

The good news is that every year the bar is raised, with more brands understanding that integrating your TV spots with your paid and organic search efforts and social media outreach gives you the best return on the Super Bowl ad investment. While best practices are still far from universal, it’s nice to see that last year’s plateau was merely a pause in the continued adoption of marketing integration: