While I have wrapped up my coverage of Super Bowl XLIV with this last post I wrote on Monday, my friend and blog colleague, Yvonne DiVita, wrote her first and only post about it yesterday on the Lip-sticking blog which asks the question, Super Bowl Ads: Female Friendly? Now Yvonne definitely isn’t a woman who enjoys
football, very much unlike me who is one of many female NFL fans! But she “had to” watch the game and therefore, has some interesting insights, as she normally does. Today was my day to add my two-cents over at the Lip-sticking blog, so here’s what I had to say.

With all the focus and hoopla over the Super Bowl XLIV game and the ads associated with it, it’s hard to believe that the Olympic Winter Games are
getting underway starting this Friday in Vancouver, Canada. It seems
like they kinda sneaked up on us. So I’m now getting excited that there
is life after football.

Well for
many of us ladies, those that are entrepreneurs, small business owners,
professionals working for larger organizations and moms, this time of
year it seems that we all need a bit of inspiration. Especially with so
much cold and snow that has hit a good portion of the country this
winter. So what better way then to turn on the Olympic Games, which you
can watch on TV and online from NBC,
and learn about these amazing athletes as they bring home a medal.
There are many personal stories that we will get to hear over the next
couple of weeks of those athletes that have overcome challenges and
worked so hard to get where they are today.

One program that is truly inspirational is from McDonald’s,
who if the Official Restaurant for the 8th consecutive Games and will
be feeding over 10,000 people consisting of the athletes, coaches and
officials. McDonald’s Champion Kids program was originally launched at
the Beijing 2008 Games with the goal to inspire kids to become more
active and to enable kids to attend the Games. So this week, 10 kids
from the U.S. who participated in a McDonald’s essay contest will be
headed to Vancouver with a parent for four days to experience a
once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.

These 10 kids submitted a
200-word essay about how they exemplify the Olympic values of
excellence, friendship and respect. They also had to upload a photo of
themselves. Being chosen to be a McDonald’s Champion Kid means that
they will be serving as youth correspondents at the Games. So they get
to attend many events, meet athletes and also tour the local sites.
McDonald’s chose to do an essay contest vs. just a random-draw
sweepstakes promotion because writing skills are such an important
factor, therefore an essay contest seemed a natural fit.

McDonald’s has launched the McNuggett’s Village,
a promotoinal micro-site for all that McDonald’s is doing at the
Vancouver Olympic Games. Here you can meet the 10 McDonald’s Champion
Kids and follow their experience through their blogs along with the
photos and videos they post. This is pretty cool. 

It will also be interesting to follow the Olympic chatter on Twitter this year. Two
years ago at the Summer Beijing Olympic Games Twitter usage was very
small (plus it was in China). You can follow @NBCOlympics here. So, let the Games begin!

This Sunday is the play offs for the NFL’s NFC and AFC championship games to determine who gets to play in this year’s Super Bowl XLIV game. Usually I start writing earlier about all the interactive promotions and advertising associated with the big game. But quite honestly I’ve been a bit unmotivated this year since my team, the Buffalo Bills, have been such a disappointment. After making it to the Super Bowl for 4 years straight, we haven’t made it to the playoffs now for 10 years. I still can’t believe it’s been that long!

So now we finally have a new head coach and we’re rebuilding. So maybe in a couple of years we’ll be back in contention again. But for now we have 4 teams who have made it this far and we’ll just have two after Sunday: The Indianapolis Colts vs. the New York Jets and the Minnesota Vikings vs. the New Orleans Saints.

Each year we’ve seen new teams enter the Super Bowl, but one thing has been consistent since I started writing this blog, which is the Doritos brand Super Bowl user-generated contest promotion. They have already revealed their six finalists selected from more than 4,000 entries in the fourth annual Doritos “Crash the Super Bowl” challenge, where the stakes this year have been bigger and bolder than ever. Contestants this year are not only competing to have their self-made Doritos commercials aired during the Super Bowl XLIV broadcast, but are also shooting to make history by beating the ad pros and garnering the top three spots in USA TODAY’s annual Ad Meter.

If they can do it, Doritos will award the winners a shared $5 million cash prize. Online consumer voting will determine which three of the six finalists will air as Doritos’ Super Bowl commercials during the big game on February 7, 2010. Fans in the U.S. can now vote for their favorite finalist once a day at Crashthesuperbowl.com up until January  31. In addition, Doritos is giving online voters a chance to get in on the action by giving away a pair of Super Bowl tickets every day of the voting period.

Here are the six finalists. Check them out and let me know which one you would vote for. Of course I have my favorite, but I don’t want to sway your choice at this point. 

“Casket” by Erwin McManus of Whittier, CA

“House Rules” Joelle De Jesus of Hollywood, CA

“Kids These Days” by Nick Dimondi of Cary, NC 

“The Smackout” by Brendan Hayward of Santa Monica, CA

“Snack Attack Samurai” by Ben Krueger of Minneapolis, MN

“Underdog” by Joshua Svoboda of Raleigh, NC

Borrell Associates held a great webinar yesterday in which they invited me to attend since it was about interactive promotions and that’s a lot of what I write about here. It was titled “Use the Internet to Tap Faster-Growing “Promotional” Dollars. They spoke mainly about the use of coupons, contests and of course plain old promotional offers.

This chart shows the steady growth they predict we’ll see in online promotions up to $21.7 Billion in 2014 . 

Online promotion on the local level will see growth as well growing from under a billion in 2009 up to $3.6 billion in 2014. So these are good signs for any of us involved in the promotional marketing business.

Online couponing is predicted to skyrocket. In 2009 34% survey of respondents said that they received their coupon online vs. 47% that still get them in the Sunday newspaper flyers.

We saw a huge jump in coupon usage over the past year which is logical since Americans have been looking at every way they can to save money during these recessional times. Total coupons went from 317 billion to just under 400 billion at 394.2 The following chart predicts what we’ll see in coupon usage going forward in 2010:

Coupons.com is by far the leader in distributing online coupons in which they currently have 2.3 million monthly visitors, me being one of the regulars. Coolsavings.com is second with 1.6 million and third is couponcabin.com at 1.2 million.

Next they went through several very successful case studies of contests and sweepstakes that were executed by local media. KTTV in Los Ageles tied in with the theatrical movie release of New Moon and gave away tickets to the premiere showing. They gathered 12,000 new email addresses to add to their database. 

The Minneapolis Star Tribune partnered with Gander Mtn. to conduct the Reel ‘em In Fishing Photo Contest. They received over 1200 submission, 2700 registrations and $35,000 in sponsorship dollars! You can see the top winning photos here.

And of course some of the most popular and successful promotions just offer a really good deal.

The TV morning news program for OK43 brings representatives from local businesses to come on for a 3 minute segment each Wednesday to talk about their business and to announce the half off deal.  It seems that they have combined a cooking or food segment with a deal offer. What a great idea!

Offering one exclusive deal per day drives people to visit your site. Woot.com is one online website that generates excitement around the limited time offers. Sometimes the deals sell out, making it even more crucial that a user visit the site each day.

So thank you Borrell Associates for including me in the session. It’s great to get some updated stats and hear actual results from a promotion.

BTW – Borrell Associates is getting ready for their Online Local Advertising conference taking place at the Grand Hyatt in New York City on February 8-9. It’s called “the Business of Making Money” Conference. Sounds like a good one to attend. I’m considering going, but not sure of my schedule yet! Let me know if any of you are planning on being there.

The health care reform conversation is everywhere these days. No matter what side of the fence you sit, it’s hard not to get in the discussion. I sat down and read the Sunday paper this morning, which is the only day anymore I even look at a printed edition, and the topic dominated both the national and local headlines.

Well now the Democratic National Committee (DNC) has taken the issue the same way many brands have promoted their products and has launched a user-generated video contest. Organizing for America’s Health Reform Video Challenge is inviting Americans to make a 30-second ad telling the story about why the status quo has got to go and explaining how the Obama plan will ensure we get the secure, quality care we need without breaking the budget.

Since the DNC has me down in their database as a Democrat along with my email address I’ve been getting many emails on this issue, which is how I became aware of this contest. The email message says  “We know that compelling videos can touch people in a way that words alone simply cannot. The messages that regular people put together will make a bigger difference than any false smears or slick ads the other side can dream up. And who knows — your creative, powerful, or touching video could help tip the balance in favor of health reform.”

So here’s the deal. Participants must upload their video to YouTube and then enter the public URL for their video in the online submission form found here on my.barackobama.com by October 18.  A panel of judges from DNC will review all the entries and select the top 20 that best meet the contest criteria. They will be looking for 30-second videos that are creative, original and interesting and those that demonstrate both impact and that have a clarity of message concerning supporting health care reform. These 20 videos will then be posted online and eligible to be voted on by the general public along with a panel of experts. Voting will begin about October 27th and continue to November 3rd.

The DNC will then tally up the scores from both the public votes and the expert panel and then combine them to come up with an overall score that is comprised of 40% from how the public voted and the other 60% from the expert panel. The winning video should be announced on November 9th. All or part of the winner’s video may then be used in a television ad associated with the DNC’s health reform campaign.

So it’ll be interesting to see how many entries are received. The great thing about how they’ve structured this contest is that by uploading the videos to YouTube it will easy enable sharing by posting links on social networks, blogs and on Twitter. We could end up with the majority of videos from the contests viewed on social media platforms versus television. Maybe a few of them will end up being the next viral video hits. So I’ll have to do a recap of this contest once it over. Stay tuned.