First Post of the Year: Super Bowl Buzz, Video Greeting Guy Revisited, Cincinnati "Digital" Networking

Super Bowl or Super Buzz? As 2007 Super Bowl ad campaigns go, Nationwide insurance led the pack in holistic, cross platform integration across the entire marketing and media mix – and it paid off! Buzz was off the charts, free publicity seemed endless, and the brand still benefits from all manner of new exposure through search results. Tomorrow (January 3, 12:30 EST), wearing my Nielsen hat, I’ll be co-leading a free Nielsen webinar with Steven Schreibman, VP of Advertising and Brand Management for Nationwide, to talk about holistic marketing, consumer-generated media,  even organizational dynamics around the spot, and of course the spot's star, Kevin Federline.  Anyway, here’s the webinar link again, and here’s another peak at last year’s spot as well as a longer post I wrote last year on the campaign. More context on Super Bowl advertising in general on Nielsen's blog dedicated to game measurements, Road to the Big Game.  (I'll write about this "corporate blog" endeavor in greater depth shortly.)

Video Greeting Guy Revisited:  Here's an update on David Spark, the guy who recently sent me a customized "Hey Pete" holiday video greeting.  Turns out this (how shall I say...) video diarreahist sent 325 personal video holiday greetings to friends, relatives, and contacts -- all customized and quite sincere I might add.  Anyway, he carefully indexed the "shocked" and "surprised" and "delighted" reactions from the recipients and they are worth a skim (all good lessons in fine-tuning your 2008 relationship marketing assumptions).  In a follow-up post, Spark also lays out his secret-sauce formula (quite detailed I might add) for "scaling" such an effort.  Quite impressive, although I'm a bit weary over too many folks taking his cue next year -- even if it's personal!  Marketers love to over-saturate. Video in bulk could also be quite time-consuming to get through; sometimes it's one heck of a lot more efficient to just skim a card in less than a minute. Still, kudos for the quite authentic effort here.

Digital Cincinnati: For the Cincinnati-based subscribers and readers of this blog (or Cincinnati ex-pats)  you should know I just created a Facebook group entitled "Digital Cincinnati." Here's the basic description. "A networking hub for students, digital entrepreneurs, local interactive marketing experts, online video passionistas, and "old timers" looking to learn from the wired generation, and vice versa. This group will also be a sounding board for new ideas and digital opportunities in the greater Cincinnati region. Let's think big!"  Just started it a few days ago, and it's got nice and diverse pick-up from various stakeholders: academics, students, digital agencies, local brand managers, entrepreneurs, etc.  Again, here's the link.

 

Comments

[jpc]

Kevin Federline ad was very creative, but most important you caught a giant wave and road it. The ability to attach yourself to the hottest story last year in the entertainment gossip story was key.

I love the video message and have learned a lot from his blog. Personal message is the greatest and it moves people. I just built a web site that focus is on marketing with a personal message, but I am destroying the trees. The web site main focus is B2B allowing companies to store electronic digital marketing documents on our servers. And their sales staff can retrieve marketing material that they want to send to a customer. Then write a business letter and we print and package with one or three extraordinary cookies. Greeting & Announcements from individuals have great potential. http://hotcookies.net