Super Bowl Marketing: Not Just For TV

Before the World Wide Web became an American entertainment option, the Super Bowl ad was a one-off deal. If you stepped away from the game for a moment and missed a good commercial, you were doomed to only hear about it from friends and family who did see it.

Marketing's Big Night

That's not the case anymore. Recently, ad lovers began posting Super Bowl commercials on the Internet so people could view or review their favorites. This year, it was the marketing companies themselves who posted the ads. Virtually every company marketing during the Super Bowl has an attendant Web site where the commercial itself can be seen.

In fact, in some Super Bowl marketing schemes, the Web site upstages the ad itself. Companies such as Burger King, Budweiser, and Dove soap, have extremely elaborate Web sites, where the Super Bowl commercial is just the beginning.

Super Bowl Marketing Highlights

The big Web portals are in on the action, too. AOL, Yahoo, and Google have all devoted specific pages to presenting the Super bowl commercial.

One popular option on Google Video offers Web surfers the possibility to watch all the commercials together in a 20-minute segment.

AOL has actually book-ended the commercials with a commercial (for HBO's upcoming Sopranos season), proving the company thinks its surfers are quite keen to see the Super Bowl ads again (and again).

Marketing Career Confidence Booster

Some marketing careerists see hope in the Super Bowl Web phenomenon. With the advent of Tivo and various technologies designed to avoid ad watching, marketing executives were understandably depressed.

However, the Super Bowl proves that marketing jobs aren't necessarily threatened. Consumers will continue watching ads, but like most entertainment consumption today, only in their own highly individualized (and increasingly Web-based) fashion.

Source
New York Times