With all the buzz today surrounding the post analysis of the Super Bowl ads it was difficult to get much of anything done. A couple of things really caught my attention though. Most recently was this AP report that stated that the Super Bowl game surpassed the 1983 finale of "M-A-S-H" to become the most-watched program in television history. The Nielsen Co. estimated today that 106.5 million people watched the New Orleans Saints upset the Indianapolis Colts. The "M*A*S*H" finale had 105.97 million viewers.

Overall there were a few ads that stood out, but overall they lacked the punch that normally we expect to see on the Super Bowl. The big surprise was the Google ad which the folks at CBS kept a secret and did not include Google on any of their advertiser's lists. I thought the ad was brilliant and one of the few that tugged at my heart as well as my intelligence. Here's a link to Google's YouTube Ad Blitz Channel where you can watch all the ads.

Since I started my Super Bowl XLIV coverage with this post on Doritos Brand Ad Contest I thought I'd end with it as well. This was the first time that Doritos aired four winnings ads during the Super Bowl which were “Underdog” by Joshua Svoboda of Raleigh, NC, “Casket” by Erwin McManus of Whittier, CA, “House Rules” by Joelle De Jesus of Hollywood, CA, and “Snack Attack Samurai” by Ben Krueger of Minneapolis, MN. 

The biggest story surrounds the “Underdog” commercial, which ranked #2 on the USA Today Ad Meter, and as a result won $600,000 from Doritos. Joshua Svoboda, the 24-year-old creator of “Underdog”, spent a mere $200 to film and produce the commercial. He entered the contest for a chance to take one of the top three Ad Meter spots and turn his childhood dreams into reality. Over the course of three days Joshua cast a friend’s untrained dog as the star of his commercial.

Yes, this was the one I voted for. Pets usually always win. So I was right about that, but I was wrong about who was going to win the game. Sorry Colts. Congrats to the Saints. Till next season....

Well I've been writing and tweeting about the advertising and marketing surrounding Super Bowl XLIV for the past 2-3 weeks now. So we'll finally get to see what all the hoopla is about. Yes I'm hoping it will be a close game, but the Colts are definitely the favorite over the Saints.

Last week I tweeted about this one article from the Inside Facebook blog "Facebook Marketing Goes to the Super Bowl" which seemed to get many retweets, so I thought I'd share it here. Check out the post, it's a good summary of who has integrated the social networking site into their marketing mix. By the way, did you happen to hear the news Facebook shared on it's 6th birthday? They rolled out their new home page and announced they now have 400 million worldwide users!

I wanted to write today about Super Bowl XLIV's biggest advertiser, Budweiser, who has bought five minutes of air time during the game. At the going rate of $3 million for a :30 spot that equates to $30 million! Now I'm sure they negotiated a package price, but still we must drink a lot of beer in this country for that to pay off!

What the marketing folks at Anheuser-Bush did differently this year was to ask fans on their Facebook Page to view three different videos and then vote on their favorite that they'd like to see televised during the Super Bowl game. Each fan who voted could then publish the voting results to their wall so that it ended up in their news feed for their friends to see as a way to help the promotion go viral. The Inside Facebook blog post reported that 2,000 people had posted comments on the voting since it opened last Friday. The Budweiser Facebook page has slightly over 262,000 fans as of now.

Well obviously the voting is over by now and the favorite spot that will make its debut during the Super Bowl game is "Fence" which features the ever-popular Clydesdales. So as the Inside Facebook post states "Such a strategy definitely maximizes the audience of 100 million (or so) Super Bowl watchers and the approximately equal number of U.S. Facebook users, giving Budweiser potentially twice the audience for its buck."

Sorry Budweiser, but we stocked up on Labatt's Blue Light for today's game. Being so close to Canada, it's the best value going. Looking forward to the game, the ads and watching The Who perform at halftime! Let's go Colts!

Back in December I was writing about holiday promotions and had mentioned in this post I originally wrote on the Lip-sticking Blog about the partnership that American Express was doing with the United Way in which they had sent info our way. Amex was offering a United Way Gift Card in which the $3.95 purchase charge was donated to the United Way. So the United Way was very appreciative of my including them in the blog post that they've been sending us more info for the Lip-sticking blog to consider.

So in keeping with my countdown to Super Bowl XLIV, which is happening this Sunday, February 7th, down in South Florida, I wrote another post today on the Lip-sticking blog on the advertising and marketing surrounding the big game and this one involves the NFL and the United Way. The NFL has been extremely generous to the United Way and, as in previous years, has been donating free advertising which again will include an ad during the televised Super Bowl XLIV game.

Now if any of you have been reading about the Super Bowl or watching the news, you'll realize how much this is worth. This year CBS is supposedly asking $3 million for a :30 second ad and the game is anticipated to be the most watched event of the television season and may even beat out the 2008 Super Bowl game which broke the all-time record. Overall, 57% of U.S. adults are expected to watch Super Bowl XLIV as much or more for the commercials than for the game, according to new poll by Hanon McKendry, conducted by Harris Interactive. This is a 5% interest increase over the 2009's poll, which was at 52%.

In keeping with the current United Way campaign, this year’s Super Bowl ad is focused on the crisis of childhood obesity. Addressing this challenge is one of United Way’s three pillars for advancing the common good. By 2018, United Way expects to increase by one-third the percentage of healthy youth—that’s 1.9 million more healthy young people. Youth health is also core to NFL Play 60—a national health and fitness campaign designed to encourage young fans to be active for at least 60 minutes a day.

This year's Super Bowl ad is expected to be a montage of various youth fitness activities. The base of it was filmed during the Green Bay Packers/United Way Hometown Huddle last October of a playground build. The hope of the ad is to raise awareness about the importance of physical activity, raise funds to support in-school and after-school fitness programs, and inspire people to get involved in reversing the growing epidemic of childhood obesity.

In addition they have developed the NFL LIVE UNITED campaign in which a player from each of the 32 NFL teams is represented. Billboards were produced and distributed through United Way’s partnership with the Advertising Council. Local United Ways and teams are extending the campaign with print ads, Jumbotron spots, in-stadium signage and web banners.

In South Florida the United Way of Broward County and Publix Supermarkets are displaying these billboards featuring Chad Pennington of the Miami Dolphins which are also hanging on Publix stores throughout the region two weeks leading into Super Bowl.

So thank-you NFL for your generosity in helping the United Way. We'll see how well the ad scores in memorability after the game.

Denny's is back this year with two 30-second ads and one 15-second spot promoting another giveaway offer similar to last year's. This time, Denny's will offer a free Original Grand Slam in its restaurants on Tuesday, Feb. 9, between 6 a.m. and 2 p.m. The first ad will appear in the third quarter, the second during the fourth quarter and a third will appear just before the game's two-minute warning.

Denny's is also integrating an extensive social and digital media program into the mix by creating exclusive webisodes utilizing the characters from the Super Bowl spot and featuring them on their Facebook Page, on Twitter as well as a radio tour. The chickens featured here are from the sneak peak of the spot that Denny's posted here on Facebook. Denny's is also running a sweepstakes promotion on their website for a chance to win a free Grand Slam every week for an entire year by joining Denny's Rewards.

So we'll have to wait and see who the winners are after the game is over. It's always hard to beat free food!

My countdown to the Super Bowl continues and what would the Super Bowl ads be without one for pizza? Last year I wrote this post titled: Get Ready for Some Football, Super Bowl Ads and Pizza. Well Pappa John's is back again this year for Super Bowl XLIV with a bigger piece of the pie!

They are scheduled to run a 30-second spot, their latest installment of the "Papa's in the House" campaign, just before halftime. The spot will show Papa John's founder and CEO, John Schnatter, delivering pizzas which will appear to be on Super Bowl game day but will really be filmed at this weekend's Pro Bowl game in South Florida. Papa John's wanted to film live on Super Bowl Sunday, but was told it would be impossible, due to game-day security. The Pizza chain has stated that the giveaway is meant to salute NFL fans as well as those behind the scenes at games.

In their other "Papa's in the House" commercials Mr. Schnatter has delivered pizzas at a birthday party, field-hockey game and a fire house. On New Year's Eve, they had Mr. Schnatter delivering pizzas to the sanitation crew cleaning up Times Square. Check it out:

They have taken full advantage of leveraging these sponsorships by including a sweepstakes promotion in their marketing mix which gave away two tickets to the game along with hotel accommodations. They also have special price promotions such as the "Super XL IV," an offer of any extra-large pizza with four toppings for $11.99, and the "1st and 10," any large pizza for $10. Post game offers continue with anyone ordering a large cheese pizza for $9 during the three days after the game will get a free topping for every touchdown scored. So a high scoring games means more value to Papa John's customers.

They've built a few charitable programs into the campaign as well. Papa John's "Take It To the House for Habitat" will make donate $1 million to Habitat for Humanity if the opening kick-off of the first or second half is returned for a touchdown. They're also integrating social media and have offered to double their donation if they get a million fans on their Facebook page by game day. As of now they have almost 781,000 fans and still a week away.

Papa Johns has already donated $100,000 to help earthquake victims in Haiti plus they have signed former Colts coach Tony Dungy as honorary chairman of the "National Football Month" in which Mr. Dungy's All-Pro Dads charity, dedicated to helping men become more involved fathers, receives $1 for every "All-Pro Dads" combo meal ordered from the chain's website this month.

So this all goes to show that pizza is no small business. It' TGIF and I'm thinking pizza and beer right now!

I'm continuing my coverage of Super Bowl XLI and the marketing and promotional campaigns associated with it, so I thought I'd get some of the ladies over at the Lip-sticking blog involved in the conversation since it was my day to blog over there. I'm still very excited that the Lip-sticking blog was recently listed in Forbes as one of the 20 best social media and marketing blogs by women and they named all five of us women who write on it. I've posted on the side bar on my blog a little badge we created to promote this. Now back to football and my post:

Last Sunday, after a full NFL season, we learned by watching the NFC and AFC championship games who are the two teams that get to face off against each other in this year's Super Bowl XLIV game.

We finally saw two exciting games while the rest of the playoff season had been quite boring, especially when your team didn't make the playoffs again for the 10th year in a row. (There's only two teams that fit that criteria so take a guess which one I'm referring to!) First we watched the Indianapolis Colts beat the New York Jets, which to everyone's surprise the Jets were still in the running and held the lead during most of the first half. But my man Peyton Manning came through who deserved to be named MVP for a record fourth time. As a woman football fan I wonder how anyone could you not like Peyton Manning? He's a great player and seems like a great guy.

Next we had the Minnesota Vikings vs. the New Orleans Saints which ended in a Saints win and a hard lose for the Vikings and Brett Favre. He made a mistake and should of kicked a field goal, but instead he tried for a couple more yards and lost the ball. Pretty heartbreaking for him and all of us cheering for the old guy. Yeah he's now playing for the team that was his arch rivals, but love him nonetheless (except if your a Packers fan).

Advertising Age reported yesterday that the Saints vs. Vikings game was the most watched event on TV yet this season. Can you believe that? Fox definitely made out in this case. So that implies that this year's Super Bowl game should again pull in some big ratings. For the past three years now since I started blogging I've been writing about the Super Bowl ads and promotions. For marketers it's a great way to take a look at what each other is doing and what resonates with consumers.

Last week I started my coverage with this post: Super Bowl XLIV Welcomes back the Doritos Brand Contest  for 4th Year. This year we will also see some familiar faces, some new ones and one big one that's decided to not participate. For the first time in 23 years, Pepsi will not have ads in the Super Bowl telecast. You recall some of their past ads that included some well known celebrities such as Cindy Crawford, Britney Spears and Justin Timberlake? Instead it is putting their multi-million dollar budget on the Internet with a social media program it is calling The Pepsi Refresh Project.

The Pepsi Refresh Project launched on Jan. 13 and invites people to submit their ideas online for their projects that will refresh their communities to make a better world. Visitors to the site can start voting on Feb. 1. Pepsi estimates they will fund thousands of projects spending in excess of $20 million dollars and hopes to start a movement where others will begin funding community projects in the same manner.

So we'll have to follow how Pepsi does which their Refresh Blog helps to do that. Pepsi will be engaging a large groups of bloggers, texters and tweeters as it attempts to redefine marketing. They've already gotten much PR just from the fact that they aren't advertising during the Super Bowl telecast. Doritos brand is actually owned by Pepsi-Co. so that will be their only brand on TV. Of course Coca-Cola will be back this year along with Anheuser-Busch (even though they are now owned by Belgium company, In Bev) with their Budweiser and Bud Light brands.

We have some new controversy that's already brewing and getting some buzz. A Christian family-support organization called Focus on the Family has purchased a :30 spot and is using college-football star Tim Tebow, and his mother, Pam, to deliver a message that highlights how the group supports families. Mother Pam is known for her anti-abortion message and will supposedly be telling the story in the ad of her son's risky birth and how doctors had recommended that she terminate her pregnancy at the time. Many women's groups are asking CBS to pull the ad which CBS seems not to be backing down.

It is too bad that we have to take something as fun and entertaining as the Super Bowl and instead of it bringing Americans together can cause us to split apart. With all the partisan politics going on right now and the devastation in Haiti, we could use a break for a few hours on a Sunday.

But either way millions of us will be gathering together to have Super Bowl parties and watch the game. The football story is actually the one we should be focused on. Peyton Manning's father, Archie, was the head coach of the Saints for most of his career and never made it to the playoffs. Now his son is in the Super Bowl again and this time playing against their home team. So there will be many that will have a hard time deciding who to cheer for. Me, I'm cheering for Peyton and the Colts! 

Would love to hear from some of my fellow lady football fans on who their backing and what they thought of the NFL season.

This Sunday is the play offs for the NFL's NFC and AFC championship games to determine who gets to play in this year's Super Bowl XLIV game. Usually I start writing earlier about all the interactive promotions and advertising associated with the big game. But quite honestly I've been a bit unmotivated this year since my team, the Buffalo Bills, have been such a disappointment. After making it to the Super Bowl for 4 years straight, we haven't made it to the playoffs now for 10 years. I still can't believe it's been that long!

So now we finally have a new head coach and we're rebuilding. So maybe in a couple of years we'll be back in contention again. But for now we have 4 teams who have made it this far and we'll just have two after Sunday: The Indianapolis Colts vs. the New York Jets and the Minnesota Vikings vs. the New Orleans Saints.

Each year we've seen new teams enter the Super Bowl, but one thing has been consistent since I started writing this blog, which is the Doritos brand Super Bowl user-generated contest promotion. They have already revealed their six finalists selected from more than 4,000 entries in the fourth annual Doritos "Crash the Super Bowl" challenge, where the stakes this year have been bigger and bolder than ever. Contestants this year are not only competing to have their self-made Doritos commercials aired during the Super Bowl XLIV broadcast, but are also shooting to make history by beating the ad pros and garnering the top three spots in USA TODAY's annual Ad Meter.

If they can do it, Doritos will award the winners a shared $5 million cash prize. Online consumer voting will determine which three of the six finalists will air as Doritos' Super Bowl commercials during the big game on February 7, 2010. Fans in the U.S. can now vote for their favorite finalist once a day at Crashthesuperbowl.com up until January  31. In addition, Doritos is giving online voters a chance to get in on the action by giving away a pair of Super Bowl tickets every day of the voting period.

Here are the six finalists. Check them out and let me know which one you would vote for. Of course I have my favorite, but I don't want to sway your choice at this point. 

“Casket” by Erwin McManus of Whittier, CA

“House Rules” Joelle De Jesus of Hollywood, CA

“Kids These Days” by Nick Dimondi of Cary, NC 

“The Smackout” by Brendan Hayward of Santa Monica, CA

“Snack Attack Samurai” by Ben Krueger of Minneapolis, MN

“Underdog” by Joshua Svoboda of Raleigh, NC

Since I only write once a week, Wednesdays, on The Lip-sticking blog I felt I needed to include a post related to the Haiti earthquake that hit the island a little over a week ago now. Since I wrote this post earlier today a huge aftershock of 6.5 has hit Haiti making the situation there even worse. So donations are still needed more than ever. Here is my post:

As this week's news of the horrendous Haiti earthquake unfolded it solidified the fact that social media has become an invaluable tool for keeping the lines of communication open between people around the world especially when hit with a natural disaster such as this. The Internet, social media and mobile have helped to bring people emotionally and visually closer to this event like never before which resulted in a huge outpouring of financial support.

Making a donation to the Haiti relief funds has never been easier through text messages, Twitter posts, blogs and social networks, such as Facebook. Microsoft, Yahoo and Google also donated resource as well.

Texting donations emerged as the quickest and easiest way to donate money. We all have gotten emails or seen tweets urging us to donate money to support the relief effort in Haiti. The American Red Cross has been working with mobile donation company mGive and said on Monday that it has received $22 million in donations via text messages. All you need to do is simply text “Haiti” to short code 90999, and a $10 donation to the group’s Haitian relief fund gets added to your next mobile phone bill.

So does this response show that we now have a new comfort with making financial transactions via mobile devices? Donating money through SMS may be the way fund-raising is done from now on. Events may now include a simple short code in which various causes can be tied to. Just think of the upcoming Olympics games and how teams may be able to raise funds by just including a short code. The possibilities are endless. 

Of course in order for this to be successful it means getting all the carriers to waive their messaging fees for donation texts. This is not like American Idol or Deal or No Deal where there was money to be made from the SMS traffic. A group called the Mobile Giving Foundation coordinated all the mobile money-raising for the Haitian relief fund with the four major U.S. carriers, Verizon Wireless, AT&T, Sprint and T-Mobile. So it's not that easy of a solution. 

I also just wanted to mention that Wegmans grocery stores, which is locally headquartered here in Rochester, NY, had announced on Monday that it collected $564,000 from customers and employees from all of their 75 stores that will go to the American Red Cross International Response Fund Haiti Relief. The program began last Thursday and will run through this Saturday. Cashiers just ask all customers when they check out if they would like to donate any amount and it simply gets added to their grocery bill. Wegmans is a very generous company and has done this for local charities before so it was great that they put this program in place so quickly.

So now we watch and listen to learn how quickly all these donations will actually get to the people of Haiti in order for the healing to begin. It will be a long, hard road. But at least we now have the Internet and social media to keep the communications going.

With today being the Martin Luther King Jr. holiday it has been someone quite online, so I take it many businesses were closed. My husband had the day off and we were enjoying the house to ourselves again after our two daughters just left yesterday to head back to college. It was great to have them home and I'll miss them, but when you work out of a home office it can cause for a bit of distraction.

So now it's just me and my staff again, my two dogs, Shadow a golden retriever and Izzy a cocker spaniel who are pictured on the right, and of course the two cats, Jack and Rose.

One of the founders of BlogPaws is Yvonne DiVita, who not only founded the Lip-sticking Blog which I write for, but also the pet blog, Scratchings and Sniffings which is sponsored by Purina. While Yvonne was at the annual BlogHer Conference in Chicago this past July she met up with Caroline Golon who writes the popular animal rescue fund-raising blog, Romeo the Cat. Both ladies recognized how successful the Blogher conferences have become for women, especially mommy bloggers, but there seemed to be a unmet need for the pet community.

“Clearly, there’s a pent up demand for an event like this,” Yvonne said. “The response from the blogger community and pet brands has been incredible. We’re looking forward to a terrific event.”

The pet community in the blogosphere is large and growing, full of passionate bloggers eager to connect offline. Blog Catalog shows 12,699 blogs identified as “pet blogs.” A search in Google’s blog directory on the term “pets” shows over 32,000,000 results. Refining the search to “pet bloggers” shows 389,009 – a number that clearly indicates the popularity of blogging about one’s pets. These are people that treasure their pets and have expressed the desire to meet face-to-face with each other and with brands, something no one has yet offered them.

“Pet bloggers are among the most vocal and enthusiastic people on the Web today and the value of meeting face to face with one’s online network is priceless,” says Caroline. “As digitally-driven as we’ve all become, there is still no substitute for live interaction.”

BlogPaws 2010 is anticipating bringing together more than 300 pet bloggers and online pet enthusiasts for the first ever event which will feature keynote speakers, panel discussions, educational breakout sessions and social events. I will be a speaker on one of the panels in which we will discuss utilizing Social Sweeps™ interactive promotions on a blog that include sweepstakes and contests and how to integrate them with social networks to help spread the word. At the end of the BlogPaws 2010 a generous portion of the proceeds will be donated to two animal rescues or shelters, chosen from nominations made by attendees.

Borrell Associates held a great webinar yesterday in which they invited me to attend since it was about interactive promotions and that's a lot of what I write about here. It was titled "Use the Internet to Tap Faster-Growing "Promotional" Dollars. They spoke mainly about the use of coupons, contests and of course plain old promotional offers.

This chart shows the steady growth they predict we'll see in online promotions up to $21.7 Billion in 2014 . 

Online promotion on the local level will see growth as well growing from under a billion in 2009 up to $3.6 billion in 2014. So these are good signs for any of us involved in the promotional marketing business.

Online couponing is predicted to skyrocket. In 2009 34% survey of respondents said that they received their coupon online vs. 47% that still get them in the Sunday newspaper flyers.

We saw a huge jump in coupon usage over the past year which is logical since Americans have been looking at every way they can to save money during these recessional times. Total coupons went from 317 billion to just under 400 billion at 394.2 The following chart predicts what we'll see in coupon usage going forward in 2010:

Coupons.com is by far the leader in distributing online coupons in which they currently have 2.3 million monthly visitors, me being one of the regulars. Coolsavings.com is second with 1.6 million and third is couponcabin.com at 1.2 million.

Next they went through several very successful case studies of contests and sweepstakes that were executed by local media. KTTV in Los Ageles tied in with the theatrical movie release of New Moon and gave away tickets to the premiere showing. They gathered 12,000 new email addresses to add to their database. 

The Minneapolis Star Tribune partnered with Gander Mtn. to conduct the Reel 'em In Fishing Photo Contest. They received over 1200 submission, 2700 registrations and $35,000 in sponsorship dollars! You can see the top winning photos here.

And of course some of the most popular and successful promotions just offer a really good deal.

The TV morning news program for OK43 brings representatives from local businesses to come on for a 3 minute segment each Wednesday to talk about their business and to announce the half off deal.  It seems that they have combined a cooking or food segment with a deal offer. What a great idea!

Offering one exclusive deal per day drives people to visit your site. Woot.com is one online website that generates excitement around the limited time offers. Sometimes the deals sell out, making it even more crucial that a user visit the site each day.

So thank you Borrell Associates for including me in the session. It's great to get some updated stats and hear actual results from a promotion.

BTW - Borrell Associates is getting ready for their Online Local Advertising conference taking place at the Grand Hyatt in New York City on February 8-9. It's called "the Business of Making Money" Conference. Sounds like a good one to attend. I'm considering going, but not sure of my schedule yet! Let me know if any of you are planning on being there.