The Fine Line

When you are paying $2.7 million dollars for a 30 second spot during the Super Bowl (just for the media alone) you really should know what you are doing. Here's a few brands that did.

Audi - Truth In Engineering
Bud Light - Wine and Cheese
Pepsi - Justin

Here's a couple that didn't.
Icebreakers - Carmen 
SalesGenie.com - Panda

I'll save the "why" for a later posting but I think you may already have an idea. 

Keeping Score

Super Bowl XLII is here this weekend and part of the game experience is actually watching the commercials. So before the game you'll probably be asked "who are you betting on?" and after the game you'll be asked "what was your favorite commercial?" 

The people at Pavone (www.pavone.net) are once again bringing us realtime commercial polling at www.spotbowl.com. On the surface it's entertaining to see what ads people are reacting to but is it really measuring the success of an ad? Fortunately most creative shops are a lot more strategic than going for the "wow effect" at $90,000 a second. And I highly doubt that any of the creative briefs for these ads used the spotbowl.com index as a metric for success.

Successful advertising isn't just about entertainment it's about connecting a creative expression to a communications strategy to change beliefs and behavior. To really keep score make your communication objectives strategic, precise and clear so that you can develop ideas that will really make and impact with your audience.