Magnosticism

Still recovering from the shock and awe of Super Bowl XLII. Shock, as in I can’t believe the Patriots lost, and awe, as in the Giants - my boyhood team of choice in the ’70s before I transitioned/bandwagoned to the Pats in the ’80s and ’90s - not just beating New England, but beating them up in the process. I’ve been out of sorts all day, still trying to make sense of it.

So I’m way behind (as usual) on the usual post-Super Bowl blather over the ads that ran during the game. Far better pundits have already weighed in. You have USA Today’s Ad Meter results [puking e-trade baby only ranks 15th - are you kidding me?], and BusinessWeek’s picks and pans (nice graphic treatment with the embedded ads), and the curious critiques of AdAge Ad Critic Bob Garfield (Bridgestone homophobia? screams that frighten children?), and countless other post-mortems that show just how focused we all are on unimportant things.

Spare me the debate over whether these ads actually provide any return on investment. Buzz trackers are off the charts for this event, and the YouTube effect no doubt makes these spots justifiable. The only one I’m truly perplexed by is salesgenie.com - a completely inane three-pack (3 spots!!!) from a dot-com that sells call and mailing lists. Double ick. Adweek provides an important piece of insight on these spots:  

Vin Gupta, chairman of Salesgenie … said that, like the previous spot, he conceptualized and wrote copy for the new ads himself.

So there you have it. Gupta claims that last year’s spot sent 25,000 folks scurrying to the website. He doesn’t say if they bought any sales leads once they got there. But why sweat the details? This is the Super Bowl, baby.  

Update: Churbuck concurs.

Burger King and its agency Crispin Porter + Bogusky figured out the whole Internet viral marketing thing a long time ago, first with the Subservient Chicken and since with a steady stream of innovative programs for engaging online surfers and gamers. Their latest brainchild is the Simpsonize Me site, part of BK’s extensive tie-in with The Simpsons Movie, which debuts tomorrow. BK has had loads of traffic and plenty of positive buzz since last week’s launch of the Simpsonize Me site, which is supposed to enable visitors to upload a photo and some personal info to have themselves rendered as a Simpsons character. From the Miami Herald:

In the first three days of Simpsonizeme.com’s launch, the site received more than 16 million hits, and more than 700,000 photos were ”Simpsonized,” according to Burger King spokeswoman Robin Chung. Visitors were uploading an average of three photos each and spending about 12 minutes on the site.

”We provide a forum where they can be entertained and have fun, and that’s the most effective way to get people engaged with our brand,” said Tiana Lang, media and interactive manager for Burger King.

The site is so popular, in fact, that it’s now disabled. D’oh! I thought we were past the days of overloaded web servers caused by an unexpected traffic surge. But how could this have been unexpected? No excuse for a marketer launching a promotion without coordinating with the techies to anticipate and plan for heavy traffic. Being told to come back later is probably not the type of engagement Lang was referring to.

A Google search of iPhone this morning turned up nearly 73 million results; Google News turned up more than 12,000 references to recent articles and blog posts. Groups of early adopters-slash-yahoos are already parked in front of AT&T stores to get one of the phones - which don’t go on sale until 6 p.m. Friday. In fine capitalist fashion, some are offering to sell their spots to the highest bidder. Six months of user-generated hype and a slick Apple ad campaign have laid the groundwork for the iPhone frenzy, and now early reviewers are falling all over themselves in praise of the new device. Apple has once again orchestrated a masterful product launch, combining design innovation and unmatched marketing savvy to create what could be the MOST IMPORTANT NEW PRODUCT IN THE HISTORY OF THE WORLD.

No one does this marketing/innovation thing better than Apple, but is the hype enough to get the masses to buy one long after the launch? I’m guessing not, for one reason, and it’s not the price; it’s the network. For the first time in recent memory, Apple has to rely on a partner to help deliver the promise of one of its products. AT&T Wireless, as the exclusive wireless carrier, will play a major role in determining the long-term success of the iPhone. And that must scare the bejeesus out of Steve Jobs and Co. Wireless carriers in general have shown a remarkable ability to not care about their customers, opting to put far more effort into acquiring new ones than retaining existing subscribers.

When you get a dropped signal while making a call or surfing the Web from your phone, you blame the network provider, not the handset maker. But with the extreme brand awareness around the iPhone, I sense that any connection problems will reflect just as much on Apple’s brand as on AT&T’s. A few bad network experiences from early users could take the air out of the iPhone’s pumped-up balloon pretty quickly.

David Meerman Scott has just published his latest book, The New Rules of Marketing and PR, and was kind enough to include me on his list of acknowledgements. In Blogistan, that means I am required to link back to his post and also publish the list of all the other bloggers to whom he gives a virtual shout out:

As I told David, I look forward to reading the book and will post my thoughts about it here once I’m done.  

Not a new story, but I read this morning that the organizers of this year’s Pan American Games, the Olympics-like competition among countries in the Western Hemisphere, are prohibiting athletes from blogging from the July event in Brazil. These forward-thinking leaders are also strictly limiting the use on the Internet of photographs and video from the games. Given that the Pan Am Games command virtually zero interest in the United States, I can see why these visionaries would take every step to guard against overexposure. To borrow from a true visionary, the Fake Steve Jobs, what a bunch of frigtards.

Give credit on two fronts to Apple Computer, er, sorry, just Apple Inc.: They make wicked cool stuff, and they know how to generate maximum buzz. Yesterday’s iPhone announcement and demo by Steve Jobs at Macworld has everyone slobbering all over themselves in praise of the new device. It’s being called everything from a killer app for mobile advertising (thanks in part to its 3.5-inch screen and its seamless convergence of phone, video and music functions) to the Holy Grail of gadgets. (Holy cow, I need one now!)

It won’t ship until June, but Apple placed the device in the hands of a few select influencers such as the NYTimes’ David Pogue and Gizmodo’s Brian Lam for short test drives. (Where can I get one?)

Jobs even teased the crowd by using the phone to play “Lovely Rita,” a subtle sign that Apple may finally be ready to strike a long-awaited deal with the Beatles’ holding company to add the bands extensive portfolio to iTunes. (I’ll take two!)

Jobs thinks Apple can sell 10 million of these puppies in 2008, which would be a small slice of the overall cell phone market but a significant new chunk of business for Apple. And at this point, who’s to doubt them? They’ve come a long way in the 15 years since former Apple CEO John Sculley introduced the first PDA, called the Newton, and showed a clunky, non-working prototype of the device. I think it was made of balsa wood.

Sony is getting killed for the flog it launched to promote its PSP, called All I Want for Xmas is a PSP. [Sony shut down the site over the weekend.] From one of the site’s “authors”:

Consider us your own personal psp hype machine, here to help you wage a holiday assault on ur parents, girl, granny, boss – whoever – so they know what you really want.

Lame! The gamers figured it out quickly and have posted more than 500 flames on the site over the past couple of days. A sample:

This is retarded. As a gamer who is part of Sony’s target audience I’m insulted not just by the integrity of this website, but that this reflects how intelligent Sony’s marketing department thinks I am. Good job turning consumers off your pr0duct.  

Hey Sony - I own a PS1 and PS2. You have cemented me never owning another of your gaming products. Good job!

You guys are so lame! Don’t you see that this guy is trying to pull a LonelyGirl15 with this blog!! It’s obviously some sony suit guy who wants teens to buy a dead console good for nothing, hello, can you say corporate bullsh*t!!!

and my favorite:

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The gamers have also figured out that all references to advertising or marketing are being blocked, so they are adding spacers and symbols (and vertical text) to get their outrage across. Sony and its agency in this campaign, a “consumer activation” firm called Zipatoni, should know better - especially in light of the recent Edelman-WalMart fiasco. Amazingly stupid marketer tricks.