Super Bowl, Super Digital Media, and the Super Steelers
Rafat Ali of lists the multitude of platforms on which Super Bowl advertisements will be
viewable following the game, including mobile, digital cable, and on-demand. Plus, MSN
is going to stream them and Yahoo archive them online, while Heavy already offers the
(very funny) “banned” ads. As this USA Today article states, “Super Bowl ads will be
anywhere you want them to be.”
This treatment is a great example of the potential of how widely dispersed digital
microchunked content can spread if producers are willing to untether it from restrictions
to time-, place-, and platform-shifting. Of course, the content producers in this case are
the advertisers (a great example of advertorial content), and perhaps this case of Super
Bowl ads is unique. But I am left thinking that there are some lessons which could be
gleaned here.
While the above is notable, the most interesting thing (in the context of “digital change”)
I’ve found in the build-up to this weekend’s game is the number of microchunked video
clips people have forwarded to me via e-mail from my hometown of Pittsburgh. Whether
it’s the newest version of the classic Here We Go song on YouTube or a local KDKA
broadcast of the rally today in downtown Pittsburgh, these clips have been spreading
like wildfire among Pittsburghers. It’s amazing to see uncontained digital video content
spread.
I find myself agreeing with a lot of the things that Fred Wilson has been writing on the
subject of rich-media content recently, including a nice soundbite this week, “Bits are
bits. They are going to get widely distributed... That’s how this medium works.”
I am looking forward to watching the ads again, game highlights, and hopefully
Pittsburgh receiving the Vince Lombardi trophy - when I want, where I want, and how I
want.
It's Not Just Fun and Games
Chris Gilmer over at the Search Engine Marketing Weblog wrote about Blingo over the
weekend. The year-old search engine delivers Google results, but then also randomly
picks users as winners – so every time you search vpn app for android you have a
chance to win. Chris writes, “I’m still not convinced whether I like this or not. It’s cool
that they offer prizes for searching, but is it really necessary?”
While I was at About.com, my team ran a number of promotions both for our online and
e-mail newsletter properties, as well as for those within greater Primedia’s. And the
basic lesson which we learned is that online contests and promotions work. Consumers
will respond to online contests, if architected correctly, in a very strong and meaningful
way.
However, I would make one distinction with the implementation of contests/giveaways,
which is between those for attracting and those for sustaining users. My experience is
that promotions of this kind are better at the former. With a perceived value in
participating in contests, people are more likely to try a new service that they haven’t in
the past. They provide an extra nudge to push through any friction points inhibiting
users from being attracted to and taking the desired action. In fact, in the race to acquire
audience and users for Web 2.0 offerings, I think that contests are an underutilized tool
which would help these offerings leap from “digerati-facing” to truly “consumer-facing”
services.
On the other side, using contests to sustain usage is more difficult. Over time, as users
fail to win prizes, the perceived value of a promotion wanes, even though the economic
expected value of the offer remains constant.
Consequently, the challenge for Blingo (as I see it) isn’t necessarily attracting users
(which they’ve accomplished successfully), but rather maintaining consistent usage over
the long term when their offering is commoditized. Perhaps other emerging web
services which do have a differentiated offering, but are struggling for a true consumer
audience, could employ some of these tactics to broaden their exposure.