From snow in Michigan, to catering in Phoenix, from hummus and Sushi in California, to fried jalapeños in Texas, I’ve been to my share of Super Bowl parties, but this is the first during which I almost spit out my food. No, it wasn’t the sweet and spicy combination of jalapeños in beer batter nor the epic flub by Christina Aguilera, I am increasingly astounded by the lengths to which marketers will go to promote another brand, failing to appreciate lessons learned so long ago.
Facebook owned Super Bowl XLV
At $3M a pop, while everyone is scratching their head as to why Groupon, SalesForce’s Chatter, HomeAway, and Living Social pulled a Pets.com, at least the internet based businesses, for the most part, were smart enough to recognize how little value there is in promoting Facebook (damn you eTrade for breaking our shot at 1.000). In a coup for Facebook worth at least a couple million in free advertising, the brand was as prominent as an AOL Keyword; as marketing agencies earning millions for their effort continue to struggle with what it means to support social marketing in their ad campaigns. Kudos to Madison Avenue for their promotion of Facebook this year.
Brisk, brought to you by Eminem and Facebook at :28
Sketchers, brought to you by Kim Kardashian and Facebook at :26
Bud Light, brought to you by Facebook at :25
Of course, Budweiser, er… Facebook at :58
At least Pepsi has the common sense to brand the domain with PepsiMAX.com/facebook at :28
And thanks Car Max, for being subtle at :28
But come on eTrade! You should know better.
Finally, am I mistaken or is that a subliminal hashtag at the end of this Audi commercial? :55
Does mainstream America even know what to do with that?
At the end of the day, all I can really take away from Super Bowl XLV is that I need a new car, need to use Facebook more, and that Darth Vader is still the coolest bad guy around.
