A particularly great game this year, though I felt that the commercials were lacking. The word “sleazy” was used by some party-goers to describe the GoDaddy ads, but the ends have always seemed to justify the means for Bob Parsons. The Doritos snow globe ad was entertaining and Audi was fun.

What makes the ads really fun is dollar betting. At the beginning of each commercial break, we’ll each throw down a buck and guess what type of ad will come up first (soda, beer, car, etc.). Side bets are common, and at one point someone started betting that there would or wouldn’t be a web site listed in the ad. I was intrigued and took a few of these bets.

I wasn’t as sensitive to it before, but this revealed quite plainly how many large non-dotcom companies didn’t list their web site on the final “info screen” of the commercial. Three that stood out were Toyota, Budweiser, Audi, and Heineken. I’m not alone. Regarding the Audi ad, Michael Lebowitz of Forbes said, “Jason Statham is a good choice. Funny, but doesn’t rely completely on gags. A solid spot, but where’s the URL? Am I going to be asking that all night long? It’s 2009, right?”

My interpretation of this is optimistically to believe that it wasn’t simply a gross oversight from these companies, but that they have determined that people find them through search engines. Certainly with well-known brands like these, the appropriate web site comes up immediately through a Google search.

But at the end of the day, putting your web site URL on as much of your marketing material as possible is the best bet. People have come to expect it, and to an extent are comforted by it. Every ad has a final page of info to leave a lingering impression, or reinforce existing impressions. So why not take up a small piece of this valuable real estate to point people to your web site? Even if they are right about people using search engines to find them (or I’m right about giving them the benefit of the doubt), is it ever worth losing the minority of people who aren’t?

Consider especially that these ads will be posts to thousands, if not millions, of web sites as embedded YouTube videos. The more info about your company that you can put in the video itself the better since all the other pieces might not make their way to the viewed web site.

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Andy Swindler Categories: Entrepreneurship, Marketing, Social Media, Web

Back from BlogWell — a riveting, fast-paced look at how some of the big guys do social media. I caught presentations from The Mayo Clinic, Proctor & Gamble, Sharpie, and Molson (who filled a spot at the last minute and brought much beer). Consistent themes included:

• Start with a simple campaign or technology, then grow.
• It’s not about marketing. It’s about interacting.
• Be proactive about transparency and disclosure.
• Don’t pour beer into a frosty mug (drop a note in the comments to find out why)

I was especially struck by the presentation from Susan Wessel at Sharpie (and not just because of the limited edition Barack Obama Sharpie’s), who indicated that for all their visibility, Sharpie is actually a pretty small company. As the primary PR rep for the company, she engaged in blogging and Twitter on her own time. I think this is the way it’s going to be for businesses for the foreseeable future who are unwilling or unable to commit additional resources to social media campaigns. In this case, she wanted to prove its value and the only way to do that was to do it. This is truer of blogging than any other form of marketing I’ve seen. The worst thing you can do is never start.

Maybe I especially remember Susan since I got her very last limited edition Barack Obama sharpie marker. Good word of mouth there.

Here are a couple of photos of Andy Sernovitz from GasPedal/The Blog Council and Adam Moffat from Molson mid-beer:

Here’s a good write-up on BlogWell from Chicago Tech Report.

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Andy Swindler Categories: Entrepreneurship, Marketing, Social Media, Web

I’m attending the BlogWell social media conference today, which is put together by Andy Sernovitz at GasPedal and The Blog Council. Really looking forward to hear how some larger companies are embracing social media, as they often have a harder time adapting to change and truly adopting the notion of transparency.

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Andy Swindler Categories: Entrepreneurship, Marketing, Social Media, Technology, Web

Lollapalooza was generally a raging success this weekend. My favorite was Radiohead on Friday. They rarely disappoint.

Someone who did disappoint, however, was AT&T. It’s one thing to be caught off-guard by a city hosting an event that brings 75,000 people together on one day. It’s quite another when you are SPONSORING that event. Talk about bad marketing. It was difficult to get a call through, and I got a pile of text messages at the end of the evening from friends all throughout the day telling me where they were 6 hours ago. Great. Overall, AT&T has been okay, but I doubt I’d be with them were it not for the iPhone. To their credit, it did get a little better throughout the weekend, but not much.

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Andy Swindler Categories: Marketing, Technology