By Patricia Wilson, founder of BrandCottage

The Super Bowl has long been thought of as the incubator for advertising and marketing innovation. For Super Bowl XLVI, this is more true than ever.


For the past couple of years, marketers and advertisers have filled Twitter and social media channels with Super Bowl conversations — about the ads as much as about the game. On February 5, when the game airs, Super Bowl advertisers will be working overtime to see that the general public tweets about their favorite commercials as well.

Shazam! Super Bowl Marketing Gets Social

“Super Bowl XLVI marks a tipping point for the anticipated explosive growth of interactive TV and will be a glimpse of what’s to come with emerging technology in this space,” said my friend, Susan Borst, a social media consultant. “Notable this year is the first live streaming of the big game by the NFL and Verizon (NFL Mobile), with an estimated one-third of ads being Shazam-able on smart phones. With more than 60 percent of fans watching the game tied to a second screen, this truly will be the most social Super Bowl ever.”


This year, advertisers are going all out to connect their brands to social media channels. The potential, based on last year’s social media results, is tremendous:

• Super Bowl XLV was the topic of more than 4.5 million tweets (Semiocast).
• During the final moments of the 2011 game, fans sent 4,064 tweets per second (The Huffington Post).

“Having spent record-breaking sums to secure the most valuable television slots in advertising, global brands from Coca-Cola to Volkswagen are looking to leverage social media to extend the buzz and reach of their ads,” writes Yinka Adegoke for Rueters.

Super Bowl 2012: Social Media Highlights

More than 150 million people will watch the game between the New York Giants and the New England Patriots. This year, it is estimated that the average 30-second spot will cost about $3.5 million, up from last year’s average of $3 million. (All this in a down economy, I might add.)


Some of his year’s reported social media highlights:


Century 21: Behind-the-scenes advertising footage via its app.


Coca-Cola: Along with the TV commercial featuring the Arctic polar bears, the bears will also be active on social media channels, including their own #GameDayPolarBears hashtag on Twitter. “The computer-animated bears will appear in a video stream running throughout the game at CokePolarBowl.com, a site hosted within Facebook,” reports USA TODAY.


Mars M&M’s: Touting a new candy, Ms. Brown, with an @mmsbrown Twitter handle.


Pepsi: Featuring X Factor USA winner Melanie Amaro performing the song, Respect. Fans can download a free video on their smart phones using a Shazam app.


Volkswagen’s Audi: Highlighting young vampires who are stunned by the Audi S7′s LED headlights (a spoof on the Twilight series), with continued conversation on Twitter: #SoLongVampires.

Super Bowl Ads: Not Just for TV

“Super Bowl ads aren’t just for TV anymore,” writes Carolyn Said at SFGate.


Said notes that many companies already have and others will share clips on YouTube. Companies are also extending their messages offline. Kia Motors, for example, is running teaser ads in movie theaters.


The trend in social media with the Super Bowl has been building over the past two or three years,” says Tim Calkins, a Northwestern University marketing professor, in a msnbc.com story. “This year, we’re really seeing it go to a totally new level where marketers are making social networking a core part of their Super Bowl efforts.”


Patricia Wilson is the founder of BrandCottage, a media marketing company with offices in New York, Atlanta and Washington, D.C.

By Patricia Wilson, founder of BrandCottage

This blog originally appeared as part of a series of contributions to Ann Tran’s blog, “An Expectation To Be Young In Social Media?” Ten of Ann’s social media friends were asked to respond to the statement: To work online or in new media, there’s an expectation for you to be young.” The following is my response:


My clients want two things: brand insights and knowledge based on my years of marketing experience and proof that I can harness technology within the media landscape to deliver customers.


What’s unique today is that innovation happens at such a rapid pace, we no longer experience the generational adoption gaps. My son blogs. So do I. My young staffers tweet, pin and Facebook. So do I.


What about working in the high-tech world? Are younger people better? Can older people still contribute?


Age doesn’t matter. But you have to stay innovative, passionate and adaptive to change. You can’t be stuck in the past.


Hiring young people does help keep everyone current and moving forward. Experienced workers contribute with business insights that come only from years of experience.


Please feel free to share your thoughts on this topic.


Patricia Wilson is the founder of BrandCottage, a media marketing company with offices in New York, Atlanta and Washington, D.C.

By Patricia Wilson, founder of BrandCottage

Advertising is dead. Long live advertising!


Or so the chant continues as advertising spending continues its march from economic doldrums and adjusts to changes due to technological innovations and shifting consumer media habits.

Interpublic Group’s Magna Global recently lowered its 2012 worldwide ad revenue projections, but still predicts total ad revenues to be up 3.7 percent — nearly $153 billion — in the United States. Similarly, ZenithOptimedia forecasts a 3.6 percent growth expenditure for the United States in 2012, pointing to continued newspaper declines and flat magazine advertising,  but increased market share for Internet advertising.


Biggest gainers: digital and mobile ads aimed at driving new revenue from a growing appetite for tablet computers that come in all shapes and sizes, from the innovation-leading Apple iPad to the low-cost Amazon Kindle Fire (see PCMag’s tablet review). However, even within the television and digital ad spaces, changing priorities in ad spending look like the norm for 2012.


(See related BrandCottage blogs: Advertising’s Recovery: Not all Media Created Equal and Advertising Spending Looks Up in 2010.)

TV Advertising Maintains Market Share

Holding its own in the battle for advertising dollars: television.


Cable “cord cutting” is expected to continue in the U.S. at an annual rate of 500,000 subscribers for the next few years,” said Vincent Letang,the executive vice president and director of global forecasting at Interpublic Group’s Magna Global (reported by MediaDailyNews). But dollars won’t be lost as much as they are redirected to other video channels and platforms.

Print Down But Not Out

A poor performance in the second half of last year resulted in an 3.1 percent decline in magazine ad pages for 2011 compared with 2010, according to a report recently issued by the Publishers Information Bureau (PIB). Category declines included food and food products, home furnishings and supplies, public transportation, hotels and resorts and direct response companies.


There are, however, some “pockets of strength” in the apparel, cosmetics and financial sectors. In fact, according to Mediafinder.com, 239 new magazines launched in 2011, up 24 percent from 193 new launches in 2010 (see MediaDailyNews). Business-to-business magazines almost doubled, from 34 new titles in 2010 to 62 last year.

Innovation Drives Advertising Disruption

Three emerging trends are the direct result of disruptive technologies, according to a 2012 market survey conducted by AdMedia Partners:

• The distribution of content across trans-media channels.
• The demand for real-time, more personalized content across multiple devices.
• Exponential growth in the ability to collect, manage, analyze and execute on marketing data.

“As a consequence, digital media and marketing services are experiencing more rapid growth than both the overall economy and marketing spending as a whole,” according to the AdMedia report.


The Internet is and will continue to be the fastest-growing medium, according to ZenithOptimedia. Major Internet advertising trends, worldwide:

• Display is growing the fastest, at 18.9 percent a year, and is driven mainly by online video and social media.
• Paid search is growing more than 15 percent a year, but growth is “slightly restrained by the shift in search behavior from desktop to mobile devices, where costs are currently lower.”
• Google increased its global share of the Internet market from 34.9 percent in 2006 to 44.1 percent in 2010.
• Facebook has overtaken AOL with a market share of 3.1 percent in 2010.

Digital advertising has quickly advanced from a fringe buy to an imperative part of companies’ media mix,” notes Jenna Levy in the Marketing Conversation blog.


Even more amazing, Forrester Research predicts that U.S. advertisers will spend $77 billion on interactive marketing in 2016 (thanks DailyDOOH).


That’s the amount spent on television today!

Patricia Wilson is the founder of BrandCottage, a media marketing company with offices in New York, Atlanta and Washington, D.C.