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By Vegasbab, February 14, 2010 10:08 am

Post #500. Wow. Ok, now that that’s out of the way, onto talk of Superbowl commercials and my three favorites.

The thing I found strange and interesting? Where was the paid search? The mobile calls to action? The url? The “become a fan on facebook” and “follow us on twitter”? Almost non-existent. Maybe the years of mobile and social still aren’t ready for the masses. Maybe last year’s social campaigns proved to be too much work for not enough positive return. So, yes, in a year, nothing about Superbowl commercials has changed. In fact, I look back at last year’s Superbowl post and I can basically repost and call it Superbowl XILV.

But enough lamenting, onto the fun. You can view all the others here.

This kid is so freaking cute. Extra points for Doritos for adding commenting to their YouTube video.

And everyone’s favorite… Granted, I enjoyed it too, but these debuted online back in November on one of Google’s YouTube Channels. All the ones featured are fun.

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By Vegasbab, March 27, 2009 5:42 pm

I’m not the biggest fan of Michael Phelps. Never have been. But, still a great, funny video:

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By Vegasbab, February 17, 2009 9:26 pm

Growing up, swimming shaped my whole life. When you spend 40+ hours per week at the pool, how can it not?

I don’t regret the long hours nor the wrinkled fingers nor swimming til I puked blood. And, I certainly don’t regret the lessons I learned and have carried with me into everything I do.

My wish is that one day, my kids’ get a swim coach just as amazing (and scary) who will impart similar lessons unto them:

Never walk when you can swim.
Never take the easy way out. Never miss an opportunity to practice.

Not racing is like practicing for a spelling test and then not taking it.
It’s not enough to show up to practice. Take the risk and race. Otherwise, all your work is for nothing.

Practice doesn’t start until the lactic acid kicks in.
If you’re not pushing yourself out of comfort zones, you’ll never get better.

There’s no reason not to show up to practice.
Take your commitments seriously. Don’t make silly excuses. Play like a champion.

Coach never explained his lessons. He repeated them until they were second nature and let us figure out what each one truly meant. Twenty years later? I still say to myself, “Never walk when you can swim,” any time I’m about to get out of the water.

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By Vegasbab, February 8, 2009 10:02 pm

Mark my words, Michael Phelps will not compete in the 2012 Olympics. With his fiasco this week, I’ve been thinking a lot about this. I’m still struggling with the decision but, from one swimmer to another here’s why:

1. He’s out of college. Swimming after college is hard. Period. During college, you have a daily schedule, you have friends who do the same thing and you don’t have much else to do. Even though you don’t have much to do, you’re kept busy with classes, study hours and swim practice. Enough to fill a day and keep anyone out of trouble or from getting bored.
2. What has Phelps done since finishing the Olympics? Partied. He’s in Vegas constantly. When he’s not in Vegas, he’s partying somewhere else. Classic burnout modus operandi. Will he stop? Probably. Most swimmers go through the same cycles and always end up back in the water.
3. He’s unmotivated. Just look at all the social media accounts he set up and has now abandoned. Did you also notice he started using them this week after being caught? He’s already won eight gold medals. What’s his goal in 2012? Win nine? Winning eight again would just be boring. In fact, when asked, he says his greatest swimming moment is a swim from Athens NOT the recent Olympics.
4. He’s bored. Phelps is a classic case of ADD. He already won eight gold medals. He’s already number one. Unless some superstar appears out of the blue, he’s already beat all the opponents he’s dreamed of beating. He’s moving on to bigger and better things. In a young adult’s life, four years is a hell of a long time. Think about it. How long have you held a job before getting “the itch”? One year? Maybe two?
5. It won’t be worth the effort. The Olympic committee and USA Swimming Organization are unforgiving. They’ll remember this one bong hit and put him through so many drug tests and other hoops it just won’t be worth it. Also, the news will bring this incident up repeatedly. I’m sure he’d rather brush it under a rug and forget about it. These three entities won’t let him.

Why do I think he might participate? Six months before the Olympics he’ll get motivated. He’ll hop back in the water, practice hard and once again dominate. But, if he starts practicing or honestly considering 2012 before then, I’ll be shocked.

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By Vegasbab, February 1, 2009 11:51 pm

The quote, “The more things change, the more they stay the same,” seems to describe Superbowl XLII vs. XLIII perfectly.

What stayed the same?

1. The majority of ads contained NO URL.
2. Once again, sites weren’t ready for the traffic. You’d think they’d learn from last year. You think someone would warn them. But, NOOOOO. I wonder if it had more to do with a communication breakdown between departments? Did anyone bother to tell their IT team they were running a Super Bowl commercial? Probably not.
3. NO paid search. Why hasn’t any marketer implemented this into their Super Bowl plan!?!?! Seriously, how hard and how much time does it take to add additional keywords and ad copy? Hell, you can set up your own AdWords account in under fifteen minutes.
4. To top it off, NO ad contained a text call to action. This shocks me. Can you imagine how much phone number acquisition could have taken place? I’m getting wet and sick at the same time just thinking about it.
5. Sobe had a semi-weird commercial that no one understood. Seriously, how many people picked up 3-D glasses? Even if you did, did you really put them on for a thirty second commercial?

What changed?

1. OMG. The noise on twitter was deafening. I couldn’t take it, but others seemed to love it. Broadcasting your thoughts on the commercials to a few hundred people just as geeky as you? Yeah, I totally see the appeal.
2. With social media playing a more prominent role, I think brands who bought commercial spots actually got more bang for their buck. Facebook Fan Pages, Twitter, one stop shop for viewing the ads online? Yes, much better integration.
3. Commercials were “leaked” early to the web. This was my favorite part. It goes back to users being in control. I could watch when and how I wanted. I could share with friends and coworkers. I could watch over and over again. I didn’t have to wait until Sunday, hoping that I wouldn’t miss the “cool” ad. Just one more reason why I love the Miller High Life 1-Second Spots.
4. All the ads were immediately up on Hulu. AND it was promoted throughout the Superbowl. Remember last year having to search AND not finding some of the ads? Or, to the cringe of Brand Managers everywhere, finding a shitty copy of it on YouTube from some guy named JizzSaver?
5. Usually, I love the Budweiser Super Bowl ads. At least one always makes my favorite list. This year? I couldn’t even add one to my Runner Up list. Bummer.

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By Vegasbab, September 10, 2008 12:23 am

So you can get a cool widget and make it move! Because I don’t sync my runs with Nike+, mine just sits on its lazy ass and stretches  

Since Nike is apparently oh so smart for coming up with Nike+, you would think they’d make better sharing features. You know, like a Mini Me widget to add to my blog vs. just a screenshot. Oh well. I guess you can’t think of everything. But, I’m sure many others find this annoying. And, if Nike was monitoring the chatter, they would have probably picked up on this a long time ago.

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By Vegasbab, August 25, 2008 11:22 pm

Oftentimes, search gets a bad rap. It can do no right. However, it’s important to remember that SEM is a “pull” form of marketing. Unless a person actively goes to their search tool of choice (Google, Yahoo, Live, whatever), types in (a) your brand name or (b) the generic category that your brand falls into, you’ll never be found.

So, now the question becomes, how often do you want to be found? Do you want to be found every time someone types in your brand name (i.e. Speedo)? How about when someone types in the generic category (i.e. swimming)? What about obscure terms that relate to your brand (i.e. Michael Phelps)? Is it necessary to show up for the broad terms (i.e. sports)? If you answer, “yes” to all of the above, a cautionary, second question begs an answer. If a brand moves all their money to search, how will consumers know what to search for? Without buzz elsewhere, there’s going to be no “pull” to drive customers to search for a product. Nonetheless, wouldn’t you continue to move budget to SEM as long as the ROI was there? In this case, give the masses what they want… your brand.

Let’s take a look… the graph from Google Insights shows major growth for Speedo and Nike occurring around the Olympic Trials and Olympic Games.

As Nike or Speedo, would you have capitalized on this additional buzz? Were those searching for additional news a qualified audience (i.e. athletes, sports fanatics) or bored housewives that had nothing to do but watch the Olympics? If you need to move quickly and inexpensively, search is one of the easiest things to put into motion. However, is it worth it? Do the spikes lead to increased revenue or does the increased CTR backfire and ruin your ROI?

If the increased CTR kills your campaign, is it really the unqualified audience or an inability to make a sale? If…

1. Your website sucks / your conversion funnel is difficult
2. Your website sucks / doesn’t evoke enough interest for someone to physically go to a store
3. Your front line people can’t close the deal

…then, no amount of push or pull marketing will increase sales. You can lead a horse to water, but you can’t make them drink.

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By Vegasbab, August 13, 2008 1:53 pm

I recently updated my five year plan. I’m not a big fan of five year plans- too much committment – but mine was about two years outdated and in need of some serious revisions.

Anyway, when comparing the “old” and the “new”, there was only one item that stayed the same… qualify for the Ironman World Championships. I always push it back because it requires some serious endurance training. But, after today’s practice, I don’t think it would be as hard as I always make it out to be. I’d have to add some distance to the running, throw in a few more open water swims and add biking back to the routine. Easy cheesy.

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By Vegasbab, August 9, 2008 12:18 pm

I love random trivia. Here’s some about the Olympic Opening Ceremonies in Beijing:

• 11,000 athletes and 204 nations with 87 of them never having a medal winner will partake in the 2008 Summer Olympics
• 15,000 performers took part
• Dancers trained for eight months
  Film maker, Zhang Yimou choreographed all the performances
• 91,000 spectators
• This was the most expensive Opening Ceremonies to date and ten times more expensive than the Opening Ceremonies at Athens
• 92% of revenue generated goes towards the staging of the Olympic Games
• This is the first Opening Ceremonies to be live “tweeted“
• Beijing is the largest country to ever host the Olympics
• Ralph Lauren designed the outfits American athletes wore during the ceremonies
• Judo athlete, Ricardo Blas from Guam is the largest Olympic athlete to date at six feet tall and 399 pounds

Check out great pictures of the Opening Ceremonies courtesy of The Big Picture.

[vodpod id=ExternalVideo.656697&w=425&h=350&fv=allowFullScreen%3Dtrue%26]

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By Vegasbab, August 9, 2008 12:12 pm

As I sit here watching the Opening Ceremonies of the 29th Summer Olympics, I am in awe. I can’t even begin to imagine how much time, effort and thought went into coordinating not only the performances, but also the men, women and children (15,000 of them) executing those performances.

In the weeks leading up to the Games, Beijing received a lot of “negative” press about the strict guidelines, traffic laws and restrictions that they plan on imposing this week. And yes, some of it is a little extreme- like making citizens take a swig of liquids that are in discarded bottles (wish I could find that article again). But, I get it and I applaud them for it.

For one week, their ENTIRE country is not only in the spotlight of the United States, but in the spotlight of every single country that is participating. And, in this day in age, I’m sure a lot of the Olympic coverage will live on for much longer than a week on YouTube, Blogs, Twitter, etc.

If something were to go wrong in Beijing it would be like giving a presentation with a glaring spelling mistake to 2.5 billion people. Okay, not the greatest example, but the take away from both would be the mistake and not all the amazingly right things done.

In the case of the Olympic hosting country, “bad” press is not “good” press. I applaud Beijing for taking every precautionary, proactive step possible to not allow “bad” press to happen.