It may be a bit premature to declare the winning advertiser from Super Blog Bowl XLII . Conclusive results of the Super Bowl advertiser’s success on the blogosphere will be presented in the form of a Collective Intellect report at the end of February. Until then, we will continue to evaluate which advertisers had the best Super Bowl Sunday and determine if my pre-game predictions were accurate.

On February 1st I predicted that Pepsi, Anheuser-Busch, GoDaddy and Audi would have the most successful campaigns based on their pre-game blog buzz. By saying “successful” I meant that they would produce the most post-game buzz. It is my belief that blog conversation is equal or more influential than any other measurement of conversation or buzz out there.

The following chart compares last week’s share of voice to that from the beginning of the game until Monday 2/4 around noon:

After examining my top four advertiser prediction to the post-game share of voice, it is pretty clear that pre-game buzz directly correlates with post-game buzz. The one exception being Coca-Cola whose Parade Balloons ad propelled them to the top of skyscrapers and Collective Intellect’s post-game blog share of voice chart, knocking GoDaddy down a peg or two with their lame website-geared ad.

Another interesting change seen in a different share-of-voice chart (below) is that Pepsi and Hyundai actually lost buzz after their spots aired. Anheuser-Busch on the other hand built on the pre-game buzz to jump towards the top.

I believe there are many reasons why Anheuser-Busch increased share of voice. First, they previewed five of the seven ads before the game, giving blogs an opportunity to be first to link and build excitement around the ads. Next, their “secret commercial” tactic was used to create interaction between viewers and BudBowl.com (obviously not part of the post-game success - below). And they’re Budweiser, the King of Beers and the King of Super Bowl Advertising for crying out loud; all of the above reasons feed into and are a product of their dominance in this arena.

Most importantly, Anheuser-Busch bought seven ads. Any advertiser who buys that many spots should expect to finish first in blog activity. To their credit, they did. And having seven spots provides better odds that one of those ads will be blogged and commented on. It also gave them the opportunity to go viral on You Tube with the Will Ferrell ad - capturing the triple crown of online advertising; blog activity, viral spread, website - performing funny Jackie Moon outakes.

So at this point in Blog Bowl XLII I would have to say there are two champions from the game within the game. Coca-Cola, who emerged in the top-five after barely making the pre-buzz list. And Anheuser-Busch, who had the most post-game buzz, used multiple online platforms and maintained buzz afterwards.

Download Collective Intellect’s post-game mini-report here (or go to AdRANTs blog) and stay tuned for the official Collective Intellect Super Bowl Advertising report at the end of the month for more in-depth coverage.

Tags: Analyzing Consumer Generated Media, Brand Management, Mass Media/Culture // 3 Comments »

There’s no need to watch today’s Super Tuesday presidential election coverage, we already know who’s going to win: Barack Obama and John McCain.

How do we know this?

Marketing Pilgrim and Collective Intellect have joined forces to release “Election 2008: Using Social Media Measurement as a tool for predicting poll results” a study that looked at sentiment across social media and the search engines. Based upon our findings, we’re confidently predicting a win for Democrat Obama and Republican McCain

• More Here

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We chose five different Super Tuesday states to gauge—California, Colorado, Georgia, Massachusetts, and Missouri. For these states, we used the methodology of combining activity and sentiment of state and national blogs.

We also made an overall prediction using a similar, but untested, method. We measured the sentiment and activity for national blogs. The candidate’s name had to be mentioned within a certain number of words of any one of the Super Tuesday states. The search parameters were necessarily looser than with individual states, but we’re hypothesizing that the “collective intellect” will outweigh any small inconsistencies.

(click to enlarge)

With the exception of California and Georgia, it appears to be a tight race. Massachusetts, Missouri, and Colorado are all separated by a mere 2 percentage points, which we would have to consider too close to call.

(click to enlarge)

For a full report on these predictions, detailed analysis and projections for the GOP races for the five states, and a three-month candidate sentiment report jointly researched with Marketing Pilgrim, please download this free pdf file.

Tags: Analyzing Consumer Generated Media, Mass Media/Culture // 3 Comments »

Tweitgeist twitter theme cloud heavily weighted with superbowl themes. It makes sense but just didn’t think it would be this over the top.

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The blogosphere has spoken… Audi’s Godfather spot has an early lead in Super Bowl XXLII blog activity. If we must choose a loser for the first half it would have to be Salesgenie.com, who is already getting bashed for the Indian salesman reference. Pepsi scored some comments for the Justin Timberlake spot as expected, and in my opinion - along with those watching the game here at Collective Intellect - Doritos’ musician contest didn’t hold a flame to a giant mouse jumping out of the wall to beat down its hunter.

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I was recently directed to an article - Hot in 2007, UGC Takes Bleacher Seat at this Year’s Super Bowl, posted on January 16 at Tripinfo.com - that said this year’s Super Bowl advertisers didn’t include as much user-generated content and are less interactive than a year ago. I’m not familiar with Tripinfo.com and not sure why they are re-posting this Matthew G. Nelson piece, but I digress.

What I do find interesting is that the article had quotes from a marketing official at Cymfony and the EVP of Nielsen Online. Both companies have done research and tracking around Super Bowl advertising in the past, so I by no means doubt their knowledge in the area. However, I am challenging their stance that companies are shying away from creating pre-game buzz via consumer interaction.

“I’m seeing a decline [in interactive elements] compared to last year,” said Jim Nail, chief strategy and marketing office for Cymfony, a brand monitoring company. “We’ve been tracking all this stuff for a month and a half, and the volume of traditional online discussion and media coverage is a lot lower than last year.”

Interesting. Maybe this article was published before Budweiser announced that a top-secret Super Bowl ad would be disclosed to viewers who voted on their other game-day commercials at BudBowl.com . Or Go Daddy previewed their spot that directs ad junkies and “racing fans” to GoDaddy.com during the game for exclusive Danica Patrick footage. And, if you really want to see the new Audi commercial before it airs, make sure you go to their website and register. All three of these “interactive elements” produced buzz for their respective company.

Pete Blackshaw from Neilsen Online didn’t make as bold a statement, but rather gave his interpretation why UGC isn’t as prevelent this year:

“There were definitely some watershed elements of last year, especially around the contest and promotion to create your own ad,” he said. “At the same time… for a lot of advertisers that idea has been tried and doesn’t have the potential to have the same return as something that’s more original.”

Collective Intellect, like Cymfony, has been tracking Super Bowl advertising online for the past two to three months. And similar to Nielson Online, CI monitors online sources, placing more emphasis on blogs and message boards in online monitoring of companies, brands and themes.

Tracking Super Bowl advertising discussions has shown a lot of blog content over the past month, much more than traditional online news. Because CI didn’t track the Big Game last year, it is impossible to make a comparison. But based on my social media knowledge, anytime a subject produces more blog activity than news, there is a lot of conversation around an area.

One week before the Super Bowl, Share of Voice across advertisers was what most people expected with Pepsi, Bud, Go Daddy and Audi leading the field.

It’s important to note here that Budweiser – bloggers are promising Bud will run anywhere from 7 to 10 spots – still has less activity than Pepsi. And Go Daddy - only showing one commercial – owns a rather larger share of voice, giving it a higher rate of return than Bud.

Even more amazing is Doritos - the most interactive campaign of all advertisers – shows surprisingly low blog activity when compared to the other advertising king-pins above. This would support Blackshaw’s opinion that UGC is old news and consumers aren’t impressed.

And after examining this graph, I would agree with Blackshaw that UGC is not effective in 2008. I believe that social media - blogs, message boards and social networks - have taken its place. Most people don’t have the time, desire or skill to record a song and send it into Doritos, but they do have five or ten minutes to blog about a Pepsi commercial.

The evidence is in the numbers. Companies no longer need to include consumers in their commercials, they need to place their commercials on the consumer platform — in social media. If we examine the spikes in the above graph, it provides insight on how this game works.

Every activity explosion occurs when a company releases new information directly to bloggers, or when the information is picked up by bloggers. For example:

• Pepsi and Amazon reveals their MP3 campaign on 1/14.
• Five of Budweiser’s commercials are revealed including the top-secret ad mentioned above on 1/22.
• Go Daddy discloses info on their rejected ad, causing curiosity through controversy on 1/24.

Companies create buzz with these tactics and are still able to unleash their agencies to create professional creative that will most likely have greater viral spread than any American Idol wanna-be band playing during the Doritos 2.7 whatever million dollar spot.

My point is, UGC isn’t dead. Instead, it has morphed into social media, and is less about interactive content. Every blog post, message board entry and You Tube comment is a form of user-generated content, because other consumers read it, write it and make their own comments. Using these methods, the only thing you need to create or add to a campaign is a computer with Internet connection — no music skills required.

In the Political spectrum, the blogosphere is successfully being used to predict which candidates will win each state’s primary. Applying this strategy to Super Bowl advertising campaigns would predict Pepsi, Bud, Audi and Go Daddy to have the most successful campaigns in ’08. It will also be interesting to see which advertising agencies can propel their clients into this group of elites without the pre-buzz head start. This Sunday will provide all of the answers.

Tags: Analyzing Consumer Generated Media, Brand Management, Mass Media/Culture // 2 Comments »