The 49ers or Ravens? My money is on social video marketing: the true winner of the Super Bowl.

(Source: NFL)

The Super Bowl has become a national holiday.  It continues to get bigger and bigger.  The game itself seems to play second fiddle to everything else surrounding the 60 minutes of football.  The game also brings hundreds of amazing facts and statistics.

(Source: NFL)

What is your favorite Super Bowl stat?  Is it that Americans will eat 1.23 billion chicken wings on the big day? Or is it that one third of every U.S. Adult will place a bet on the game? Super Bowl Sunday is much more than just a game.  111 million people will turn out to watch spectacle this year.  Of those 111 million, 39% come out just for the commercials. (Source: Beltrone)  Whether it’s for the game or the commercials, the Super Bowl has become a mecca for advertisers.   “Of the 45 most-watched network TV broadcasts of all time, 21 are Super Bowls.”(Source: Allott)  Even with the current 3.8-4.0 million dollar price tag per 30-second commercial, companies are running at the chance to have millions eyeballs on their brand.  According, to Leslie Moonves, CEO of CBS, this year’s commercial slots sold out weeks before the game. (Source: NYT)

 

With the high price for a 30-second commercial, companies are discovering the best ways to maximize their ROI.  Most have learned to integrate their traditional TV commercial advertising with their social media campaigns.  In addition, they’ve learned ways expand the reach of their commercials beyond the 30 seconds through viral social videos.  Social video marketing is the marriage between social media and Internet videos.  Its intent is to proliferate buzz, awareness, and engagement around a company’s brand.  This year's Super Bowl is not just about the names Colin Kaepernick, Ray Lewis, and other NFL stars, but it’s about the name Social Video.  

Here are recent some trends with social videos and the Super Bowl:

User-Generated Content

 

Several companies have learned to engage their customers by offering prizes for advertising concepts.  Doritos is already well known for their yearly Facebook contests through which they offer $1 million to the fan that receives the most votes for the video that they personally create, direct, and film.  The winning video is selected for Doritos' 30-second spot during the Super Bowl.  This helps create conversations about Doritos well before Super Bowl Sunday as fans view videos among the hundreds entered into the contest.  KSL did a spot this week about a Utah man that has been a finalist the last three years which only creates more buzz for Doritos.  You may remember the winning commercial from last year:
 

 

Second Screen

Two-thirds of Super Bowl viewers watch the big game with a second screen.  (Source: Stupakevick)  These second screens include tablets, smart phones, and laptops.  Commercials take advantage of these second screens by directing viewers to their site for more information, content, and to-be-continued stories.  The real winners of second screens are social media sites.  Through Facebook pages, Twitter handles, and hashtags, companies can immediately engage with their customers.  In addition, millions of viewers can react to commercials through the use of hashtags.  These conversations and reactions can be very beneficial to companies to know the success of their ads and to monitor what’s being said.  Brandwatch.com creates an interactive tool every Super Bowl that helps track what online buzz is created from certain ads and whether those millions of dollars are well spent.  Last year Volkswagen's estimated ad budget was $7 million and with these analytical tools, they could quickly see effectiveness and buzz created by their money.  

Brandwatch.com

Teasers

More and more companies are releasing teaser campaigns before Super Bowl Sunday.  This increases buzz and creates anticipation several weeks before the 30-second spot actual airs.   Unruly, the experts in social video distribution, state that 75% of the top 20 shared Super Bowl commercials last year launched a teaser before the big day. (Source: Unruly)  This strategy allows for even more viewers to see the ad campaign. Sometimes the teasers can become a bigger hit then the commercial itself.  This was the case last year with Volkswagen's teaser that beat out the game day spot.  

With only a few days before the 2013 game, dozens of companies have again adopted this strategy.   Taco Bell's "Grandpa Goes Wild" has already received over 45,000 shares while Cars.com's "Dramatized Focus Group" only has 165.  You can watch all the other teasers here. 

 

Website Visitors

While Facebook likes and Twitter mentions and follows are a nice part of a company’s social media campaign, actual visits to their site is what they really want.  Social videos that help generate visits to the website are typically the most successful ones.  “Getting consumers’ email addresses can be infinitely more valuable than a Facebook like.” (Source: Heine)  Last year, GoDaddy.com saw a 25% increase in domain name sales the day after the Superbowl.  This is largely due to their videos that drove users to their sites.  

The Final Drive

 While all these trends in social videos seem like great brand marketing ideas, the secret is to use web analytics to understand the meaning of all those visitors and viewers.  It's important to integrate the information gathered from traditional KPIs with the information about your brand obtained by  data crawlers.  Having a successful video go viral and be shared millions won't do any good unless the web analytics of the brand are simultaneously studied.  Web analytics will be more informational as they are coupled with web monitoring services like Brandwatch and Unruly.  Combined, the whole picture of who is viewing your videos and whether they are a paying customer comes together.

So after you've mixed the guacamole and made your bets, make sure  do your part and start sharing those videos.   

Go Niners!

Here are some other great facts about social videos and the Super Bowl. 

References

Allott, Daniel. (2011). http://spectator.org/archives/2011/12/14/the-cult-of-watching-sports

Beltrone, Gabriel. (2013). http://www.adweek.com/news/advertising-branding/ads-trump-football-super-bowl-survey-146776

Heine, Christopher. (2013). http://www.adweek.com/news/technology/social-play-second-string-game-day-146669

 

Customers Behavior: Changing How Company’s Compete

 

“In virtually every industry, many former strategic alternatives are no longer viable or likely to be successful.” [1] 

  

 More and more companies are facing increasing levels of difficulty to perform financially.  In many circumstances the tools that gave companies a competitive advantage no longer work as effectively.  To stay relevant companies can no longer look backwards solely at their financial metrics when making decision. [2] Companies need to learn how to harness the power of data from their customer’s behavior. 

"...a new form of competition based on the extensive use of analytics, data, and fact-based decision making."                                           

                                                                                                         - Competing on Analytics [3]
  

         

Image taken from: http://econsultancy.com/us/blog/10288-companies-struggling-to-perform-attribution-and-online-offline-measurement

The company SAS® describes wonderfully on their website how utility companies can use customer analytics to make more informed decisions.  While the text below is taking from SAS's promotional information, it illustrates the concept of how companies need to be looking at the data from consumer behavior to add more value to the customer and the company:

Every Customer interaction is an opportunity to capture data and convert it into knowledge that can improve decision making.  With SAS, you can:

·    Create an accurate, single view of the customer by consolidating data from every source, using embedded data quality routines to correct, standardize and verify data, then transforming it into a complete picture of the entire customer relationship.

·      Use advanced analytic techniques to comply with regulator guidelines for energy efficiently efforts by discovering how different customer segments consume energy during peak or off-peak hours.  Effectively recover debt by gaining insights into the major factors that cause customers to pay late or not at all and adjusting billing strategies and plans accordingly.

·      Connect the right offers to the right customer segments by using automated campaign planning to pull more relevant, predictive lists, then pair that information with knowledge of the right opportunities so you can respond to customer needs or opportunities in the generation/transmission value chain.

·      Improve organizational decision making by using predictive analytics to model future customer behaviors, forecast growth in demand by various customer segments and optimize utility reactions based on past events. [

"...a new form of competition based on the extensive use of analytics, data, and fact-based decision making."                                           

                                                                                              

Image Courtesy of http://analyticsoc.com/humor/

 

Here are a some examples of how companies have started to use the data and statistic to change they way the compete and do business:

Image courtesy of Fathead.com

• Following the Oakland A’s use of analytics based off of players behaviors, the Red Sox’s started using data to shape their teams strategy, which is credited to have helped them win the 2004 World Series.

•  While the use of data is not new in baseball, the Red Sox’s used non-traditional data they had compiled about players behaviors to
  select their players.

•  Data is collected to measure the “fans experience.” How did they decided to attend a game, which route(s) did they take to get to the ballpark, how effective is the cleaning crew, etc.

• The data is used to help maximize the team’s revenue.  Ticket price elasticity is derived from the data and models were created to help add new seats in unused locations. [5]

Image courtesy of Fathead.com

•  The Patriots won 3 Super Bowl’s in 4 years, part of the success is due to their data analytical models.  The data helps the team on and off the field.

•  The analytics help the team select players, stay below the salary cap, and aids in the calling of plays based upon game variables and statistical outcomes.

•  Data is used to track and measure “the total fan experience.”  During home games, 20-25 employees are assigned to take quantitative measurements of the stadium food, parking, personnel, and bathroom cleanliness, etc.    

       

•  Data is collected and analyzed specific to external vendors.  The measurements are used to evaluate contracts and create incentives around performance.  [6]

Image courtesy of Wikipedia

• The American retailing company views new parents as customers who's  shopping habits are vulnerable to change.  Instead of waiting to send these new parents coupons after the birth announcement is made public (following the crowd of other companies that do this) Targets marketers wanted to figure out how they could send the coupons to pregnant women in their second trimester.

• Target assigns each customer their own “Guest ID number” that keeps track of everything they buy. [7]

• Using this data, Target was able to see patterns in customers purchasing behaviors and identify when someone might be pregnant.  Specifically, when women started to stock up on large amounts of scent-free soap and extra-big bags of cottons balls.

• Using 25 specific products, Target was able to assign the shopper a “pregnancy prediction score and even estimate the due date within a small time frame. [8]

To stay relevant, companies need to learn how to use the warehouse of data on consumer behaviors.  It is worth the cost.  For some companies the real challenge might the task of changing the companies culture to be data driven.
 

If you are interested in learning more about customer analytics check out this post: Customer Analytics: Incorporating Customers “Secret” Behaviors in the Company’s Strategy.   

To learn more about what the data should look like, check out Whartons' Customer Analytics Initiative.

 

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1.     Davenport, Thomas H., Cohen, Don, and Jacobson, AL.  “  Competing on Analytics.”  Babson Executive Education, May 2005

2.     Davenport, Thomas H., Cohen, Don, and Jacobson, AL.  “  Competing on Analytics.”  Babson Executive Education, May 2005

3.     Davenport, Thomas H., Cohen, Don, and Jacobson, AL.  “  Competing on Analytics.”  Babson Executive Education, May 2005

4.     http://www.sas.com/industry/utilities/customer-analytics/index.html

5.     Davenport, Thomas H., Cohen, Don, and Jacobson, AL.  “  Competing on Analytics.”  Babson Executive Education, May 2005

6.     Davenport, Thomas H., Cohen, Don, and Jacobson, AL.  “  Competing on Analytics.”  Babson Executive Education, May 2005

7.     Duhigg, Charles.  “How Companies Learn Your Secrets.”  The New Tork Times.  February 16, 2012.

8.     Hill, Kashmir.  “How Target Figured Out a Teen Girl Was Pregnant before Her Father Did.”  Forbes.com 2/16/2012