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THE REAL-TIME MARKETING SUPER BOWL: One question ahead of last night's Super Bowl was whether there would be a big real-time marketing hit like there was last year, when Oreo sent out its famous "You Can Still Dunk In The Dark" tweet, which played on the fact that the stadium had suffered an electrical blackout. Many big brands staffed social media "command centers," trying to seize on such opportunities this year. Digiday tracked them with a live blog. The snarky DiGiorno Pizza Twitter account riffed on the lopsided result in an all-caps tweet, "YO, THIS GAME IS LIKE A DIGIORNO PIZZA BECAUSE IT WAS DONE AFTER TWENTY MINUTES." Digiday's Brian Morrissey picked the DiGiorno tweet as this year's number one real-time marketing moment. Oreo managed to get plenty of buzz again this year, when it tweeted that it would not attempt to equal last year's feat: "Hey guys … enjoy the game tonight. We’re going dark. #OreoOut." It placed number 5 on Digiday's list. (Digiday)
It’s so much more fun to watch FOX when it’s someone else being blitzed & sacked! #SuperBowl
— Hillary Clinton (@HillaryClinton) February 3, 2014HILLARY WINS: But in our view, Hillary Clinton — or her social media advisors — won the real-time marketing Super Bowl crown this year. Hillary Clinton, who is expected to make a serious run for the presidency in 2016, sent a witty tweet about how it was nice to watch Fox and not be the one in the network's cross-hairs (the Super Bowl was on Fox not Fox News, but anyway). The tweet earned her nearly 53,000 retweets as of this morning, and was a clever, perfectly timed way to generate buzz as the national political conversation begins to focus on 2016. Hillary's tweet was number two on Digiday's list, but had more than twice as many retweets as DiGiorno's tweet.
YOUTUBE'S AD LONG-TAIL: In terms of TV ads, Budweiser was clearly dominant this year, with two very effective spots, one on returning military veterans and the other a kind of sequel to last year's spot featuring a puppy that will do anything to see its friend, a Clydesdale horse. The spot, called "Puppy Love," was already getting tons of traction on YouTube ahead of the Super Bowl, with nearly 27 million views before the game started, according to social media analytics company Visible Measures, cited by TechCrunch. The TechCrunch article sought to explain why more and more brands are uploading their ads to YouTube and other online video sites before the big game. More than 40 brands did so this year. "Basically, it seems that advertisers now treat the game as just part of a monthlong campaign, one where online views are increasingly important."(TechCrunch)
BUDWEISER'S ADS ALSO BIG ON TWITTER: Budweiser's ad spot also generated a spike of tweeting during the game. However, an esurance campaign tied to a $1.5 million giveaway went notably viral after the game, and generated an immense amount of Twitter activity, more than 1.7 million tweets according to Patrick Ruffini, founder of Washington, DC-based digital agency, Engage. (Patrick Ruffini)
TWITTER TAKING ANOTHER STAB AT E-COMMERCE: Re/code reports that Twitter is getting serious about promoting e-commerce on the social network. A new feature called "Twitter Commerce," which still isn't public, will allow users to purchase goods directly within the social network, according to documentation for the new feature obtained by Re/code reporters Mike Isaac and Jason Del Rey. To power the first stages of Twitter Commerce, the social network will reportedly partner with e-commerce site Fancy.com and online payment processor Stripe. How would it work? Judging by Re/code's reporting, it looks like Fancy would run commerce-themed tweets similar to Promoted Tweets, and Twitter users on the app or desktop site would be able to click on these, enter credit card information, and complete a purchase — all within Twitter. Stripe would then presumably have the user's payment information on record and facilitate streamlined purchasing. (Re/code)
A GRAVEYARD OF SOCIAL COMMERCE EFFORTS: But will Twitter commerce become just one more failed attempt by social networks to get users to buy things directly from their news feeds? American Express teamed up with Twitter early in 2013 to allow customers to purchase special offers by tweeting a special hashtag. The transaction was then confirmed by a special AmEx twitter account. The experiment didn't seem to get much traction. Similarly, Facebook scrapped its Gifts program back in August 2013.
QUOTE OF THE DAY: "Twitter might be the smartest new media of the decade, but its user interface sucks ... " - Frederic Filloux, Monday Note, arguing that Twitter is great for power users, but a terribly confusing experience for everyday social media consumers.
TWITTER'S MUSIC INSIGHTS: In other Twitter news, the social network has teamed up with 300 Entertainment to develop analytics software that will give the music and entertainment industries insight into consumer music tastes and preferences. It's similar to the products that Dataminr is helping Twitter build for news organizations, to mine Twitter for data and signals on emerging news stories. (The Next Web)
'Let's Face It, Social TV Is Dead': GigaOm writes that the recent spate of deals and acquisitions in the so-called social TV or second screen space is evidence of a deeper flaw in the industry: "From the very beginning, standalone social TV apps were a solution in search of a problem," writes GigaOm's Janko Roettgers. We agree. As we've written in our recent reports on the social TV and second screen industries, people don't want to open a specific app to chat with friends or share opinions about TV shows or televised sports like the Super Bowl. They'll just go to Facebook, Google+ and Twitter to do so. (GigaOm)
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