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Well there it was — another Super advertising day — and a good football game to boot.   There are tons of day after opinions on yesterday’s ads, and their insights are probably better than mine. I looked through a number of sites and wanted to recommend the following.

1. The Wall Street Journal, which has its own reader poll and comments from a wide range of advertising experts in “Auto-Industry Ads Score at the Super Bowl” (February 6, 2012 – non-subscribers may need to click here). The article lauds the “Halftime in America” ad below — while their early poll results favored the Seinfeld/Leno Acura NSX ad (also below).
2. As of this moment, the USA Today online admeter (not their focus group which reports tomorrow) shows a top five with the two Doritos ads (created in a contest), Bud Light’s “Weego,” M&M’s “Just My Shell,” and Volkswagen’s “Dog Strikes Back.”
3. You can also find plenty of pundits all over the web, but I found one of the more thoughtful analyses at the Influential Marketing Blog in the post titled “The Best and Worst Of Super Bowl Marketing Strategy 2012” (February 6, 2012).

Read one or more of these articles — they offer sometimes contradictory critiques.  Then offer your own opinions — but back them up with good reasons.  Which ads do you think are most effective?  least effective?  Why?  What makes for a good Super Bowl advertisement?

Some businesses smell an opportunity to really tie together their integrated marketing communications. They communicate distinct brand identity through the scents that customers smell in their stores or hotels. Read more at “The smell of success” (Baltimore Sun, January 19, 2012), watch a short Early Show news story (4:35) below, or check out ScentAir Technologies website.

Place yourself in the marketing department for ScenAir.  What types of businesses would be good opportunities to pursue?  Go beyond those mentioned in the article and video.  How could you promote the product to your new target market?

Today’s consumers put less stock in advertising as compared to recommendations from friends.  So how does a company get its customers talking about its products.  According to Martin Lindstrom “Under-Promise.  Over-Deliver.  And Your Brand’s Fans Will Talk” (Fast Company, January 10, 2012).

What do you think?  When is the cost of “over-delivering” likely to offset the costs?  Are there certain product categories or types of brands where this is more beneficial?

I guess this campaign is more than a year old now — but it is fresh and new to me.  John St. is an agency based in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. It is hard to call any agency an “ad” agency as most — like John St. — do all kinds of promotional efforts. The clever video below demonstrates a wide range of its services in a cute way. It actually fits as a B2B and B2C example at the same time — and it also demonstrates integrated marketing communications.

An emerging technology is augmented reality (AR). Wikipedia defines AR as “a live, direct or indirect, view of a physical, real-world environment whose elements are augmented by computer-generated sensory input such as sound, video, graphics or GPS data.” It won’t be long before shoppers are using AR to help them make buying decisions. I just read about AR in National Geographic, “Revealed World” (January 2012) – be sure to check out the photo montage to get an idea about how this will work. The article suggests that what you can now see on your smart phone is moving to specialized glasses and in a few years may be embedded in contact lenses. National Geographic used the technology in a shopping mall to promote its cable TV channel — see below.

For another example, see what Krystal did with a smart phone app below. I don’t think this really shows the full potential of AR, but it does show a low-cost way to generate some buzz around a brand. I applaud Krystal for dabbling in the new technology.

I think there is something to this technology — it sure seems like potentially useful information for shoppers — at least if you consider what it will be — not what it currently is. For that view, look back at the National Geographic article.  What else could marketers do with this technology?  Be creative and think of new applications, ideas, or brands AR might help.

Marketing is most interesting when you can see many of the concepts you learn tied together.  This article, “Philly Cream Cheese’s Spreading Appeal” (Bloomberg Businessweek, December 12, 2011) shows how some of the different elements you have been learning about in marketing can be tied together – with successful results.

Sales of Philadephia brand cream cheese were pretty much flat (mature or decline stage of the product life cycle) for most of the last decade. Then Kraft researchers (market research) noticed that heavy users of the product were using cream cheese (consumer behavior) as an ingredient in their cooking — not simply as a spread for bagels. Starting in Europe back in 2008, Kraft’s brand managers tapped into social media and the Internet to gather and share recipes using Philadephia brand cream cheese, they promoted it on cooking shows and with contests (Promotion). In the U.K. the share of customers using cream cheese as an ingredient (effective repositioning) has almost doubled to 37% — and sales are up 20% in Europe (results).

This is a great case study of a successful brand revitalization.  Check out the article for more details on the strategy.

The battle of the brands is the “competition between dealer brands and manufacturer brand” (from our text books) over which will be more popular.  Dealer brands, sometimes called private labels, are brands created by store chains (for example Safeway’s O Organics line of organic foods) and manufacturer brands are created by a producer (General Mills Cheerios).  Dealer brands have been gaining share — boosted recently by economic downturn induced consumer price sensitivity.

This Bloomberg Businessweek article “Why Grocers Are Boosting Private Labels,” gives an update and some great examples.  Dealer brands used to differentiate on price and then more recently offered comparable and sometimes higher quality.  Now many retailers are adding brand managers and investing in more aggressive promotion.  Surprising fact:  in 2009, 8.7% of food and nonalcoholic drink new products were private label – by 2011 the number more than tripled to 31.4%.

What do you think of this trend?  Will it continue?  Have you noticed more aggressive promotion from dealer brands?

The iPhone has considerable market share and mind share among consumers. So how do you break into that market? Maybe you start by copying Apple’s iPad and iPhone. Then you try to differentiate your phone with a larger screen and 4G connection speed. Samsung’s Galaxy 2 S phones have received good reviews.  But then how do you battle that Apple mystique?

These Samsung ads don’t appear to be targeting Apple loyalists who stand in these lines — they are already too loyal to Apple.  And obviously it hits a niche that just hates Apple — but Samsung and Android phones already have a reasonable share of those customers.  The question is, does it work with the larger market segment of customers looking for smartphones and not Apple lovers or haters?   What do you think?  Should Samsung be promoting phone features or image?

This provocative idea is put forth by Aaron Shapiro in his new book Users Not Customers.  The video below is an ABC News video with Shapiro, who is also a consultant.   I have not read the book and feel we must be cautious expecting that all businesses can use Google and Facebook as models.  Online firms like this have a unique cost structure that plays some role here.  Still, I think Shapiro has some interesting ideas that would benefit many businesses.

What do you think?  Should all firms eliminate advertising?  If not all firms, what types of businesses should heed this advice?

This ABC News video describes both how consumers are changing their behavior — and how major marketers like Target and P&G are responding.  The video is short at only 2:39 — though you do have an ad before it starts.

What companies might do well in this economic environment? How would you respond if you were Best Buy? Ben & Jerry’s Ice Cream? or Coca-Cola?