The Bloom Report

Upon the announcement of our offer of a free mobile marketing campaign to any national advertiser during the 2009 Super Bowl, we were met with a great deal of interest from the press and a bit of scorn from our competitors. The motivation of the offer was to bring attention to the fact that national brands and their respective agencies still aren’t harnessing the power of mobile marketing as an activation mechanism for traditional media placements. It wasn’t to devalue the strategy and execution that goes into a mobile campaign, but rather to help serve as a catalyst to drive business for both advertisers and those of us in the industry.

Unfortunately, no brand marketers took advantage of our offer and after watching all of the Super Bowl commercials (twice), it appears that only Monster.com and the United Way integrated mobile into their television commercials during the biggest broadcast of the year. How is it that in these times of supposed focus on every expenditure, and trying to drive top line growth, that only two companies allowed consumers to engage with their $3 million (just media) commercials?

While there are countless commercials for which mobile would have been a natural addition, those that really missed the opportunity are:

• Hollywood: By my count, eleven movies were promoted during the game. Each featured a compelling trailer, but little to engage the viewer outside of a url. Quick, can you recall a single url for a movie that you saw during the Super Bowl? How about eleven? With the unlimited amount of digital assets, it is unthinkable that not a single movie studio made those available during the game. Also, with many movies still several months away, the ability to sign up for a text reminder would have been great.

• Avon: I almost came out of my chair when I watched the Avon spot and there was both a url and an 800 number, but no text call to action. Instead viewers were asked to visit www.sellavon.com or call 866-yes-avon. The only reason I know the above it that I wrote them down after I watched the commercials the second time for this post. A much cleaner execution would have asked viewers to text AVON to a short code and in the reply given the url, the 800 number, and the option to reply with their email address. Those who replied with an email would have been sent an HTML email with information about becoming part of the Avon sales team, how to sign up etc. The incremental cost of the mobile portion would have been insignificant.

• Pedigree Adoption Drive: Pedigree certainly caught the attention of viewers with their use of non-traditional pets, but the pay-off for their adoption program left a lot to be desired. With zero effort (literally) they could have asked views to text ADOPT to a short code to receive a free Pedigree Adoption Guide. Pedigree offers the guide on their website and by taking just one more step they could have turned a broadcast message into something useful for viewers with an interest in pet adoption.

So, here’s to a great 2009 and let’s just hope the advertisers in the 2010 Super Bowl start to think outside the box, if only just a bit.

General, Marketing