Super Bowl Shuffle: Why Marketers Will Shift to 'Platforms'
Brands That Continually Throw to Consumers Will Win Come Monday Morning and Beyond
Posted by Garrick Schmitt on 02.01.10 @ 11:19 AM
The teams playing in this year's Super Bowl have already been decided, but the Super Bowl shuffle for advertisers
began in earnest last month when marketing mainstays like FedEx, General Motors and Pepsi made news by
announcing they were opting out of this year's ad extravaganza.
But for those looking to gauge the health of the ad industry, Super Bowl advertising is a bit of red herring. CBS is
charging about $2.5 million for 30 seconds of commercial time -- and rightly so. Rarely do you get so many
Americans watching one event and actually enjoying the advertising. It's a tremendous opportunity for most brand
marketers and we'd be foolish to look at this year's Super Bowl as proof of either the rejuvenation of the 30-second
spot or the rejection of it.
That doesn't mean some won't try. After all, last year Hulu saw a 50% increase in site traffic after running ads
during the Super Bowl and Denny's traffic to its website soared nearly 1,700% as consumers sought information
about its free breakfast promotion.
There certainly will be advertising winners (and losers) on Super Bowl Sunday but let's hope that the Monday
morning quarterback chatter doesn't obscure the larger shift at hand for marketers this year. 2010 will be the year of
the "platform" for advertisers.
Unlike a website, banner, Facebook application or 30-second spot, a platform is an always-on digital environment
that allows brands to run specific or multiple programs. The goal is to meaningfully engage consumers on multiple
levels. For some brands, that means creating an immersive experience with integrated commerce. For others, it
means enabling consumers to connect with each other in valuable, unexpected ways.
But for marketers, the real winners this year will be the brands who have built these platforms to engage consumers
well after this year's Super Bowl becomes a distant memory -- there are another 364 days to worry about after all.
Here's a look at some of the more interesting platforms in play today:
Community Action Platforms: Perhaps the biggest, and most noteworthy, push
into this space comes from PepsiCo, which opted to sit out the Super Bowl to
tout it's cause-marketing program Refresh Everything. The platform, which is
inspired by crowdsourced ventures like Kickstarter, enables Pepsi to award grant
money to consumers who suggest various ideas and iniatives for their
communities. The effort is akin to other cause-marketing efforts like Procter &
Gamble's Tide: Loads of Hope, where consumers purchase T-shirts, among
other things, to fund Tide's effort to help families stricken by disaster with basic
laundry services.
Crowdsourcing Platforms: While not exactly new, enough brands are finding
success using crowdsourcing platforms to generate insight and drive deeper
consumer participation that we will surely see more this year. Starbuck's
MyStarbucksIdea.com is clearly the outsized success here with tens of
thousands of ideas collected and a vibrant community. Dell's Idea Storm falls
into this category, as does Lego's Mindstorm. The most recent entrant is Best
Buy's Ideax, which shares similar elements of the category but goes somewhat
further by allowing users to search/browse by ideas generated "Nearby." The
community here is both virtual and local.
Commerce Platforms: As more marketers move toward a platform
model, clearly one of the benefits is allowing consumers to have a
direct relationship with the brand that's not dependent on an existing
network like Facebook or Yahoo! or a publisher like the New York
Times. A natural outcome is that more and more brands will want to
sell direct to consumers. Procter & Gamble announced that it will go
direct to consumers this month (challenging Amazon and Walmart
online) with an "eStore." Similarly, General Mills and a host of other
CPG marketers are moving onto Alice.com, which is enabling direct ecommerce for heavy hitters like General Mills and Johnson & Johnson.
Other more CPG-oriented players like Mattel are making similar
moves, it recently launched its own e-commerce store too.
Brand Experience Platforms: Experiential platforms come in many
different shapes and sizes. Nike has shifted its marketing dollars to
better support athletes through programs like Nike Plus and selling
direct to consumers via its estore. Best Buy is building credibility in the
music-instrument category by offering up expert guidance and videos.
But some of the most interesting efforts of late find brands using either
making a connection directly with consumers via tactics like blogs or
providing functionality that better connects consumers to their peers.
Lufthansa's MySkyStatus automatically sends flight updates to your
peers via Twitter, Facebook and e-mail. Similarly, JetBlue allows
consumers to vote on actual plane designs through its Jet Blue Tails
program and Southwest Airlines uses Nuts About Southwest as a social hub for its dedicated customers. Similarly,
Whole Foods uses its Whole Story to speak to consumers directly about its brand, food recipes as well as an
aggregation point for its social presence on Flickr, Facebook and Twitter.
Social CRM Platforms: Both the most nascent and promising area for brands this year is in the emerging space of
social CRM platforms, where customers rather than just company employees, provide support. Best Buy has made
the most visible move here with Twelpforce. Consumers are encouraged to simply tweet tech-related questions to
@Twelpforce for support from hundreds of its "Blue Shirts." Another interesting player here is GetSatisfaction,
which powers companies like Dopplr, Mint.com, Nike and Microsoft among others. GetSatisfaction builds
customer support communities that connects customers with their peers and a brand's employees for help.
Integration with Salesforce.com's AppExchange bodes for bigger thing ahead.
These are just a few examples of the kinds of platform moves brand marketers will make in 2010. There will
certainly be more -- especially with the rise in mobile and emerging technologies such as "touch" and augmented
reality. The big question, however, will be whether brand marketers look to extend or "distribute" across existing
social and experiential platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and their ilk, or will they create their own
platforms? The smart money should be on both. It's one thing to "fish where the fish are" but quite another to create
experiences that will sustain consumers once the hubbub of Super Bowl Sunday has faded way. Creating an
always-on platform for consumers is a winning play for the Monday morning after.