Facebook is also the place that Budweiser in the United States is hosting a pre-game promotion, asking people to vote for which of three potential spots they would like to see on the broadcast. (With five minutes of commercial time to fill, the company will also air other spots during the broadcast.)
And the U.S. employment website CareerBuilder.com has caught the democratic bug, too. Last fall, it invited people to submit ideas for ads that might spur people to escape soul-crushing workplaces. Three winners had their ideas adapted into professionally produced 30-second spots, which were posted weeks ago for people to vote on; the most popular will air Sunday during the game.
“It's to build momentum,” said Cynthia McIntyre, senior director of advertising for CareerBuilder.com. “Obviously, we love the Monday morning water cooler chatter. Why not extend it? Extend it pre-game, post-game, et cetera.”
Doritos is also inviting people to vote on its potential broadcast spots. It will air three of six homemade videos that were winnowed from a field of thousands submitted as part of a promotion.
Jay Handelman, a marketing professor at Queen's University in Kingston, expected more companies to be connecting their Super Bowl TV spots to social media by now, but he suspects they're nervous about giving up control of the message. Some non-Super Bowl promotions involving user-generated content have gone awry when jokesters and others posted unsavoury or critical material. Doritos' current promotion is highly controlled. “This is the balance that marketers have been trying to strike,” he said. “Yes, they do want to forge a dialogue, but they need to control that dialogue. They don't want criticism and parodies.”
Still, more marketers are posting material online – even in venues such as YouTube, where commenters can have their way with the brand – because they've found it can help to build anticipation for the TV broadcast of the spot. The Chicago-based auto website Cars.com uses its Super Bowl presence to not just drive consumers to its home page but also, being an ad-supported site, to attract potential advertisers. “It's a rallying point for our business,” said Carolyn Crafts, vice-president of marketing for Cars.com.
While posting the 60-second spot before the broadcast negates the element of surprise, there can be unexpected bonuses. “Even for folks who may see it in advance of the game, the message is only heightened after they've seen it more than one time,” Ms. Crafts said.
And the conversation won't end even after the Monday-morning chatter dies down. Wired magazine is inviting people to watch the game at its San Francisco offices, where their reaction to ads will be measured by biometric devices worn during the broadcast. The data will then be parsed by the research firm Innerscope – and, no doubt, used to help plan next year's Super Bowl campaigns.
