In a recent AdWeek article, author Anthony Crupi talks about how NBC has already sold most of its Super Bowl spots for $3.5 million each – up from Fox’s $3 million price last year. While he points to the ever-growing popularity of the game and the commercials that surround it, Crupi fails to mention the most obvious explanation for the 17 percent increase: the powerful multiplier effect of social media and social networking.
Social media is part of my day job. At night and on weekends, I am a poet, which means I am always on the lookout for good metaphors. Just between you and me, I will confess I even embrace cheesy metaphors from time-to-time. And since I have confided in you now, and that makes us friends, I will warn you I cannot vouch for the metaphor I am about to impose on you. I do, however, stand behind the idea it represents. While reading news from my RSS feeds recently on my Dell flat-screen monitor and listening to the Lynyrd Skynyrd channel via the Pandora radio app on my iPhone, I found a brandchannel article on product placement in a children’s show. Product placement. It can be blatant, like a logo plastered across a character’s costume in the cartoon referenced in that article. It can be slightly sneaky, like the first sentence of this paragraph. Or it can be ingenious and well-received, as it is in the popular TV show “Mad Men” (also mentioned in the brandchannel article). I spend a lot of time reading about social media and how brands struggle with when and how to make sales pitches. Those without conscience (and those bound to get voted off the island) bombard fans and followers with advertisements. The only thing they know how to say is, “Buy this now!” Most companies understand how inappropriate that is in the social space and genuinely want to mix the sales pitch with the right amount of engaging content.