Modern Insider – Online Marketing Blog

Sales are down, jobs are down, the market is way down yet the majority of Superbowl ads I caught today seem to be just the same as they were years ago. There were attempts at humor, talking babies, teasing with sexy content and celebrity. Sure branding is good, awareness is important and no one minds being entertained by a good ad (or ridiculing a bad one) but where’s the meat? In a time when companies need to show revenue direct response was sorely missing from the picture. There were however a few companies that caught on to the idea of actually driving business while getting their name out there. In particular I latched on to Universal Studios at Orlando which offered a whole lot of value and had the website to convert it into something worthwhile and something they could track.

Sales are down, jobs are down, the market is way down yet the majority of Superbowl ads I caught today seem to be just the same as they were years ago. There were attempts at humor, talking babies, teasing with sexy content and celebrity. Sure branding is good, awareness is important and no one minds being entertained by a good ad (or ridiculing a bad one) but where’s the meat? In a time when companies need to show revenue direct response was sorely missing from the picture. There were however a few companies that caught on to the idea of actually driving business while getting their name out there. In particular I latched on to Universal Studios at Orlando which offered a whole lot of value and had the website to convert it into something worthwhile and something they could track.

Universal’s campaign was pretty straight forward – be a super hero and they had some interesting ad creative to push that idea along. The DR focus hit home at the end of the ad with the simple yet meaningful offer – get a free 7 day unlimited admission ticket. They didn’t update their entire homepage or focus every ounce of marketing on this one offer but from their homepage on it was easy to find the offer, easy to get the details and easy to participate.

For Universal the deal was pretty sweet as well; they got to deliver a brand message about value, about fun and about their product to the entire audience with a huge draw to measure the views. Sure it wasn’t the funniest ad and no one stripped on it but the cost value was pretty darn effective at driving me to their site and a lot of others too. The site its self featured a simple splash page and a lead capture form asking for pretty much basic contact details. The landing page was straight to the point, the registration page followed it up with a simple form and the confirmation page ended everything nicely. All said it was quick for the consumer and a strong enough offer to warrant leaving watching old ads on Hulu and go signup. From an analytics point the campaign success has all sorts of great opportunities, traffic to the site, traffic to the promo, leads submitted and hopefully usage of those tickets when people come in. I registered for one myself and while I may never make the cross country trip to redeem I’m excited to see just what shows up.

The only real critiques I have of their campaign is not buying any search ads (or at least any that I could find) to pair up with their ad. There are a lot of companies in the ticket business and having a link right to the special during the game would have made a whole lot of sense. I still found my way to their site but there was noise in the way. They also have left a couple of words about ads on “Heros” (instead of during the Superbowl) on their registration form including in the headline but the offer was there and the page was working so not a dealbreaker, just an oversight. I’d bet Universal Studios is watching their lead counts and smiling instead of just watching their ad ratings on twitter.

I’m still on board for getting your name known, showing your creativity off and getting consideration up but I think it’s time companies put a few things in place to measure their ads and maybe drive some sales. A free soda from Coke during the game at select stores, a discount on a domain for GoDaddy, flower specials, even a carwash for test driving a car, it encourages people to act and remember. The most entertaining ads will show up online for years and still get play but the best ones for companies hungry for business will get people to act too. There’s plenty of ways to have some cake and eat it too even during a Superbowl spot.