Mobile was the big winner in the Super Bowl this year, as marketers and consumers seized the second-screen experience.

“Caring about eyeballs was your grandfather’s ad agency,” commented Dan Israel, Atlanta-based strategy lead for the mobile practice at SapientNitro, to Mobile Marketer.  “What matters today is how many people with smartphones can be gathered in one location at one time. The Super Bowl rules in this category.” 

This Super Bowl was a huge coming out party for Shazam, the mobile app that enables audio tagging to link to content and offers, which partnered with almost half of Super Bowl 46 advertisers, representing 1 million giveaways, this year.

Shazam linked to commercials by Acura, Best Buy (which offered $50 gift cards), Cars.com (which donated $1.00 per Shazam tag to charity), Bud Light, Disney (John Carter trailer), Fed Ex, GE, Honda, Pepsi, Teleflora, and Toyota to unlock exclusive content and coupons. Some of the offers:Continue reading...

As the world's biggest stage for marketers, we'd have to give Super Bowl XLVI, generously, a B-minus. While the game was compellingly competitive right until the last play, and Madonna acquitted herself pretty well for a 53-year-old halftime-show attraction, America's brand marketers barely held up their end of the extravaganza.

For one thing, there was no genuine stand-up-and-cheer advertising moment during NBC's telecast as there was last year, in Chrysler's spot featuring Eminem and its new Chrysler 200 "Imported from Detroit," although Clint Eastwood was a worthy successor.

In fact, stand-out moments in the ads were almost non-existent; the humor that carried most of the ads didn't come close to an outbreak of hilarity; and a few spots manifested jump-the-shark syndrome, such as an NBC promo that cameoed Betty White.Continue reading...

Just when it seemed that almost every Super Bowl ad already had been revealed or teased, brand marketers' buzz machines continue revving up. GM is promoting their Super Bowl XLVI spots on Chevy's YouTube channel — including talking insects on a Chevy Sonic and Volt-enchanted aliens, which you can watch below — with YouTube-only clips with Rainn Wilson encouraging fans to share, engage and vote for their favorite spots.Continue reading...

It's come to be derided as a "Hallmark holiday," a day manufactured not to put lovebirds together, but to separate a boob from his money (or in the case of couples with joint accounts, their money). Ah, romance is dead, or so cynics would say.

But brands are increasingly using creative approaches to make the day more than the stereotypical pink hearts and roses. Yes, Teleflora's Vanetine's Day-themed Super Bowl commercial may be hard to beat, but below, we share some love for brands that creatively tackled Valentine's Day this year.Continue reading...

Super Bowl XLV was a record-breaking platform for some brand marketers.

Unfortunately, there were a lot of mediocre advertisements among the five dozen national spots that appeared between kickoff of the Super Bowl and the game’s end.

The overall entertainment level and presumed effectiveness of the event's body of work was below par.

But several spots and brands sank even beneath that low mean. Here they are, in one correspondent’s view, in alphabetical order by brand.Continue reading...

Teleflora may be lawsuit-mad about Marks & Spencer using its name to directly compete on Google, but a similar scenario is playing out with Chevrolet's new Cruze model and Honda's Civic. Except this version is "IRL." That's "in real life" to all the old-timers out there.Continue reading...

In the wake of the FTC charging on Sept. 27 that its ads made deceptive health claims, POM Wonderful didn't waste any time putting out new ads that steer away from any health benefits. Instead, the California-based beverage maker's just-released trio of new ads subtly makes mythological claims under a new tagline: "Powerful Then. POM Wonderful Now."

While not stated outright, the not-so-subtle message of the new commercials, POM Wonderful co-founder Lynda Resnick tells the Associated Press, is that POM improves your sex life. The campaign — narrated by Malcolm McDowell— isn't in response to the FTC, she adds, but as AP puts it, a response "to competition from Coke and Pepsi, which are slipping small amounts of pomegranate juice into new beverages and stealing market share."

In the spot above, actress Sonja Kinski continues channeling her mom Nastassja's infamous nude-with-snake photo by Richard Avedon, with a similarly posed commercial in which she portrays a naked Eve, tempted by a serpent (and a succulent pomegranate) in the Garden of Eden. Check out POM's other libido-targeted spots after the jump.Continue reading...