The Super Bowl? What About Super Targeting?

The news and watercooler talk these days are all about new devices and who’s gonna win the Super Bowl… and I love it! Talk of new Google Nexus' phones, Apple's iPad and offensive football strategies are finally more frequent chatter than Tiger Woods’ girlfriend gossip. But when it comes time for the real work, I think brand marketers need to admit that sexy screen technology is simply a new way to communicate their image in more places. It will not be an advertising game changer anytime soon. So all those predictions you read in December about 2010 being the year of the device - well, maybe they’re true if you're a techie. But if you're a marketer, January was back to the basics of integrated promotions and enhanced audience data opportunities.

Now about that Super Bowl offensive strategy part. That has some decidedly useful parallels for digital marketing, especially when you discuss them in the context of integrated promotions and data. The integrated promotions trend is decidedly retro. When brands first started to hone their internet strategies back in the late 90s they did so by using TV to drive people to the web. Everyone remembers Pepsi’s Super Bowl/Pepsistuff.com promotion in 2001. The strategy is the same today but the destination is now slightly different. In fact, the answer to the million-dollar question "how are brands going to use social media" has pretty much been answered by this year's Super Bowl planning. Brands are going to use TV to not just drive people online, but to drive consumers towards social media, and that's a big, new development. Audi, VW, Pizza Hut. Coke, and others are using Super Bowl spots as the foundation for deep, long-term online efforts.

VW provides a good example. It will debut the "Punch Dub" campaign in a 30-second ad during the third quarter of the game Sunday as well as online. The TV spot will show a variety of people in different driving situations playing “punch buggy” gently every time they see a VW on the road. An online version of "Punch Dub" (www.facebook.com/vw) will launch on Super Bowl Sunday and will engage people with the entire Volkswagen product family and encourage people to dole out virtual "slugs" to friends and family. Players will pick any one of thirteen Volkswagen vehicles, customize their punch and choose a Facebook friend. An online guide will help players develop and hone their punching techniques. The more friends you punch, the better your chances of winning a weekly prize (6-month leases on specific vehicles listed online) and the Grand Prize: a new Volkswagen CC.

Now let’s look at this from an offensive strategy perspective. By using mass media to drive people online, a brand like VW is like a high-powered offense at the beginning of its drive. Its playbook is wide-open and it’s trying to pick up as many yards as possible just like a brand is trying to engage as many customers as possible. When that branding initiative is used to drive people online what you have is a collection of people and corresponding data points that fit into what I call a CRM bucket. Brands are good at filling the CRM bucket when they want to be. They fill it with social media network members, opt-in email responders, promotional purchase data, and frequent site visitors. It’s relatively easy to sell to customers that have already declared a level of interest in a product. If a brand marketer fills that CRM bucket with good data, to target relevant ads to valuable customers, they have fulfilled an important corporate expectation. The problem is the CRM bucket fills easily, strains customer engagement, and taxes data management capabilities. It can be like a good drive that breaks down at the 50 yard line.

TV guys are expected to broadly target valuable customers at the top of the marketing funnel, especially during “the Big Game”… You can read all you want about Super Bowl ads, but the real story with Super Bowl ads is their connection to the transaction (on the field), as they help move millions of consumers (the football) towards the ultimate conversion (the end zone). On Super Bowl Sunday, we in the online world, are akin to football players who excel in the red zone… we are, after all, the people who are closest to the conversion. We are, often times, a click or two from a purchase or registration. Not only are we closest to the goal line, we -- more often than not -- have access to some kind of data that will enable us to move the ball and ultimately break the plain. People like me and the rest of my sales staff, we’re expected to leverage targeting and, from time-to-time, micro or supertargeting in order to get the job done.

So the million-dollar question, today, is… Is this movement toward targeting and supertargeting part of a comprehensive plan for a brand? There are a handful of demand side platforms that would like it to be, and I will tell you that DSPs are having a huge effect on the sales and marketing efforts in the digital space. It seems like there’s a new DSP every day. If you don’t know, DSPs are basically optimized display ad network and scalable targeting platforms, most of them are owned or associated with mega-digital players. LucidMedia’s ADvisor just launched a couple of weeks ago. It enters a field that includes the Yahoo and Google Ad Exchanges and countless others. Agencies are also on the field with new found Internet offerings, like Publicis Groupes’ VivaKi and IPG’s Cadreon.

Like the Fox Audience Network, DSPs introduce customers throughout the marketing funnel, but most importantly, at the bottom. That’s vital as brands want to reach their sales goals. In many respects, it’s akin to bringing in the short-yardage personnel at the goal line in football. It’s a different team of guys, their playbook might be less creative, but they’re extremely effective.

By the way: Colts 34-21. You read it here first.