The Brainzooming Group

It’s always very rewarding when people appreciate Brainzooming blog content and find value from applying our strategy, creativity, and innovation ideas in their careers. It’s especially fun when there’s an opportunity to extend the Brainzooming message into new venues in collaboration with others.

Today, we’re highlighting two people who’ve been particularly kind in their appreciation for our content and in featuring Brainzooming content through their own social media presences.

Join Us and Let’s Talk Live on the WiseTalk Teleconference, May 30

Sue Bethanis, Founder and CEO of Mariposa Leadership, has been a recent, much appreciated retweeter of Brainzooming content. While Sue is newer to Twitter, she’s been hosting the monthly WiseTalk Leadership Forum since 2004 when she published her book, Leadership Chronicles of a Corporate Sage: Five Keys to Becoming a More Effective Leader.

One interesting wrinkle to WiseTalk is since it’s a live teleconference (before becoming an archived recording), listeners can ask live questions via phone and email.

This opportunity to converse and shape the content to the live audience’s interests is just one reason why I’m looking forward to being a guest on the hour-long 99^th episode of WiseTalk on Thursday, May 30, 2013 at 2 pm EDT. Sue and I will be talking about the Brainzooming approach to strategic and creative thinking, plus anything else you want to talk about specifically!

Since it’s too infrequent that I get to talk live with Brainzooming readers, I’d love to take the opportunity to do so during WiseTalk. Plus if it’s a really great show with lots of call-in questions, maybe we’ll make the greatest hits 100^th episode!

Register Today for WiseTalk and Let’s Talk Live!

How do you join in to help shape our May 30^th WiseTalk conversation?

Register for the May 30 WiseTalk teleconference right away on the Mariposa Leadership website to get your dial-in information.

Check out Stephen Lahey and the Small Business Talent Podcast

Stephen Lahey, a great phone and social media friend, is the self-proclaimed #1 Brainzooming fan! Stephen is the successful leader of Lahey Consulting, a search firm and HR consultancy he founded in 2000, with a focus on marketing recruitment and retention.

Additionally, earlier this year Stephen introduced SmallBusinessTalent.com® to help business people take advantage of their “knowledge and talent to attract more ideal clients.” Among the free resources Stephen offers on Small Business Talent is a weekly half-hour podcast providing in-depth information small business people can directly benefit from in the varied roles they play.

I was honored to be the first guest on the Small Business Talent podcast when it debuted in January 2013. Stephen and I talked about how blogging, social media, and content marketing specifically apply for small businesses, including how it fits into The Brainzooming Group business strategy. You can listen to the kick-off podcast here or on SmallBusinessTalent.com®, along with all the fantastic guests Stephen has interviewed.

Stephen has made quite an impact in such a short time with the podcast. In talking with Stephen, he has some very exciting, big name authors coming up in the near future. Additionally, we’ve talked about doing another podcast soon to dive deeper into content marketing strategy for small business. To get the first word on when that’s scheduled along with updates on Stephen’s other weekly guests, sign up for Stephen’s email list today!

What’s Next?

We have several other public appearances coming up in July, including a live, in-depth webinar on strategic thinking and a  social media workshop in Boston. More on those later, but in the meantime, let’s talk May 30! – Mike Brown

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Mike Brown

Founder of The Brainzooming Group, and a huge fan of strategy, creativity, and innovation. Mike is a frequent speaker on innovation, strategic thinking, and social media.

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The inaugural TEDxWyandotte is in the books, and my talk leading off the second half of the evening covered “Diverse Ideas in a Porous Community.” Thanks to all my Kansas City-based friends who came out to see the event, which concluded with an incredible spoken word performance by Sheri Hall. Quite honestly, after seeing Sheri in rehearsal, all the speakers suggested putting her last since none of us wanted to follow her!

Six Ideas for a First Time TED Talks Style Presentation

At some point, the TEDxWyandotte videos should be available online. We’ll highlight them here when they are posted. While waiting for the videos to go online, here are six suggestions for preparing a TEDx Talk based on my initial experiences for TEDxWyandotte.

1. Don’t overdose on videos of TED Talks

Some people watch TED Talks frequently (even daily) for inspiration. I don’t, for a variety of reasons, chief of which is they often frustrate me more than they inspire me. While my initial inclination was to play catch up and watch a bunch of TED Talks, the only complete talked I watched was Sir Ken Robinson’s humongously viewed talk on creativity and education. My main objective was to look for structure and flow ideas since his video has obviously resonated with so many people. I suggest perusing the list of most viewed TED Talks, finding one that best matches your style or topic, and concentrate on it for presentation style and delivery ideas to consider.

2. Come up with a snappy title for your TEDx Talk

This is an area where I fell flat. Based on the timing for the event’s kick-off meeting and the initial press release about the event, I had to come up with a topic and title over a weekend. Mission accomplished, but it would have been far better to have a snappy title such as one from a TED Talk Barrett Sydnor pointed me toward: “When Ideas Have Sex.” That’s a TED Talk title for you!

3. Do something different to make it a YOU Talk

TED Talks have evolved into a format that takes the audience almost completely out of the talk. It has become overly focused on the speaker, in my opinion. That’s counter to my presentation style, and I didn’t want to deliver something that was forced and unnatural. I obviously followed the time limits and tried to emphasize stories as the format suggests. Instead of being one-way delivery, however, I structured the TEDxWyandotte talk similar to the “live blog” presentations I’ve started doing. In a live blog presentation, the audience is presented a list of topics and can choose how they’d like to see the talk progress. It’s the closest I’ve discovered to giving the audience hyperlinks (akin to a blog) to go deeper or skip content as they choose.

4. Dig for stories and ideas you haven’t shared before

Telling new stories was the best suggestion I read while developing the presentation. I incorporated a story from childhood no one outside my family has ever heard and included a variety of stories and examples from blog posts outside my typical presentation repertoire. Still other stories were reworked to fit the overall event theme (“Core Impact”) more directly. The result was that even the few pieces of familiar content in the talk received a very different treatment for TEDxWyandotte.

5. Decide whether you are targeting the live audience or the video audience for your TEDx Talk

Knowing the maximum live audience in Kansas City, KS (KCK) would be 400 people made creative decisions trickier. The decision point became whether to target the live audience or the (larger – I hope) video audience who would later see the TEDxWyandotte talk. While the in-person audience prompted the “live blog” approach (especially since letting the “community” drive the content was consistent with the topic/theme) and a few Kansas City, KS references, other creative decisions were made with the video audience in mind. There were fewer KCK mentions and visuals than originally planned and I minimized the references to previous speakers more than I’d ever do (since the video audience would have no context for those remarks). These decisions were not something I anticipated beforehand.

6. Be a good boy or girl on time and the level of commercialism

Among the apparently many requirements and recommendations that go along with TEDx, the most obvious one is completing your talk within the time limit – eighteen minutes for the longest talks. Another is to not make it a commercial talk. If you’re going to sign up for a TED Talk then you need to follow the rules on these. Plan and develop your presentation so you’re removing enough content that time won’t even remotely be an issue for you or the organizers to fret.

If you have the opportunity to do a TEDx talk, do it!

Even with trying to preserve the TEDxWyandotte talk as a MIKE talk in style and approach, developing this presentation was not how I would typically approach any other presentation. The result was that it felt “off” to me right up until the event day. Even still, if you have the opportunity to present at a TEDx event, don’t hesitate to say, “Yes.” The experience was a great way to stretch myself and feel a good type of creative tension! – Mike Brown

If you enjoyed this article, subscribe to the free Brainzooming blog email updates.

Download the free ebook, “Taking the NO Out of InNOvation” to help you generate fantastic creative thinking and ideas! For an organizational innovation success boost, contact TheBrainzooming Group to help your team be more successful by rapidly expanding strategic options and creating innovative plans to efficiently implement. Email us atinfo@brainzooming.com or call us at 816-509-5320 to learn how we can deliver these benefits for you.

Mike Brown

Founder of The Brainzooming Group, and a huge fan of strategy, creativity, and innovation. Mike is a frequent speaker on innovation, strategic thinking, and social media.

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What to blog about and how to do it is a frequent search bringing people to the Brainzooming blog. This demand for ideas relative to blogging has prompted a considerable amount of blog-oriented content the past 18 months.

That much content on a particular topic always prompts requests for a post that pulls together and organizes the content in one place.

Since I’m conducting a blogging workshop on creating fantastic content for a business blog, we’re meeting two needs in one in this post with a compilation of blogging content that also serves as a primer for participants in the content class.

There are nearly forty articles organized, but if you feel as if you’re still struggling with how blogging can support your business strategy and where to get started, email (info@brainzooming.com) or call us (816-509-5320). We’ll get your business-producing social media effort going in a smart, successful direction.

Deciding to Have a Blog and Objective Setting

• Top 10 Reasons Your Organization Doesn’t Need a Blog . . . Today – It’s a trick headline. Your business does need a blog, starting now.
• “The 6 Social Media Metrics You Must Track” – Before starting your blog, download this free Brainzooming overview on how you should think about metrics and the impact a blog can have on your business.
• Blogging – 10 Permissions for Freelance and Small Business People – Trust us. If you’ve been hesitating on starting a blog for your small business for a bunch of lame reasons you’ve blown out of proportion, read this right now.

Developing Your Content Marketing and Brand Personality

• Creating Intriguing Social Media Content – 3 Fundamental Steps  - It’s not hard to create compelling content.
• A Strategic Creative Brief – 4 Benefits for Your Communications Efforts – You’ll have a stronger more sustainable blog if you begin with a strong idea of where you’re headed and who you’re targeting with your blog.
• Outside-In Blogging Strategy – Creating Robust Social Media Topics – Look outside your organization for what to blog about and identifying regular content becomes much easier.
• Social Media Content Personality Audit – Is Your Brand Personality There? – Simply because you are blogging for business doesn’t mean your personality needn’t show through in your content. No personality translates to no reason for readers to seek out your content.

Creating a Regular Blogging Schedule and Editorial Calendar

• Deciding Whether to Ditch Your Blogging Schedule – What Do You Want to Achieve? – How often you blog comes down to your business objectives, not whether you are inspired to write.
• Our Daily Blog Strategy – 5 Reasons The Brainzooming Blog Won’t Ditch It – Here’s why a high-frequency blog has made sense for us targeting a B2B market. And there are even more reasons since this post originally appeared.
• An Editorial Calendar: An Age-Old Collaborative Work – Creating an editorial calendar helps you stay better on track and publishing your blog regularly.
• Content Marketing – Space It Out Over Time – Manage your content, your time, and the expectations you place on your audience.

What to Blog About

• Social Media Content Ideation: Think – Know – Do – A tremendously efficient way to generate hundreds of content marketing  ideas.
• What to Blog About? 187 Ideas and Topics for Blogs, All in One Place – Our biggest list of links to specific blog topic ideas for business-oriented blogging.
• What to Blog About – 10 Ideas for Blogging through the New Year – There are specific topics you can blog about near the end of year when many blogs halt content creation and take advantage of readers looking for end of year information.
• Social Networking, Personal Relationships & 7 Content Strategy Questions – For business owners considering social media, there can be concerns about how much they reveal about themselves. This post contains advice and help to work through those concerns.

Structuring Your Blog Posts

• In Praise of Short Blog Posts – Blog posts don’t have to be 1,500 words. Write shorter to save time and trouble – for you and your readers.
• List Posts – 2 Tips for Creating More Popular Blog Posts – List posts work, plain and simple. Some list posts are long; some list posts are short. This gives you a rationale for when you should use which.

Blogging for B2B and Larger Companies

• A Collaborative Business Blog: Handling Senior Management Concerns – When the idea of blogging has to be sold to others, you may have some challenges. Here are some ways to counter typical concerns.
• Blog Topic Ideas – Social Media Content Strategy for a Large B2B Company – While these content marketing ideas apply to any business, larger B2B companies have tremendous content creation opportunities, if they take advantage of them.
• Social Media Policy – Whats and Whens Behind Your Guidelines – Questions to help you think through issues to consider in customizing your social media policy.
• Social Media Mistakes You Shouldn’t Be Making in Business-to-Business - Based on real-life examples, these are easy to correct social media mistakes business-to-business companies may be making.

Making the Most of Your Blogging and Social Media Time

• Social Media Productivity – 13 Tips to Maximize Your Time – Make all your content work as hard for you as possible in multiple venues.
• 15 Ideas to Make Your DIY Social Media More Successful – If you have few people and a lot to do on social media, these ideas will help maximize your effort.
• 20 Strategies for Making Your Solo Social Media Effort More Successful – 20 more ideas to get the greatest impact from an efficient implementation.
• Search Engine Optimization Strategy – Getting Smart on the Essentials – An available resource to get started on understanding search engine optimization to improve your blog traffic.

Getting Your Blog Content Seen

• Social Media – 5 Tips to Sharing an Evergreen Blog Post – Once a blog post is written, take advantage of every opportunity to use the content repeatedly in appropriate situations.
• SEO and Keyword Research Tool Use – 3 Blog Traffic Growth Ideas – Tools to help you become a better search engine optimization writer while you write.
• Content Curation – 5 Strategies from Celebrity Entertainment News Shows – Look to cheesy entertainment news shows for ideas you can incorporate into your social media sharing strategy.

Blogging Tips and Tricks

• What to Blog About and How – 25 Blogging Lessons from 5 Years and Social Media Content – Lessons in Creating Fantastic Content – Recaps of lessons learned from years of daily blogging.
• Blogging Success – 18 Blogging Ideas You Haven’t Read on Brainzooming – Ideas we haven’t pursued for the Brainzooming blog gleaned from a prominent blogger’s webinar on social media strategy.
• Reduce, Reuse, Recycle – 9 Ways to Green Your Blog – 9 tips to get more mileage from your social media effort.
• What to Blog About – 3 Ways Blogging Generates More Blog Posts – Once you get started blogging, it gets easier . . . most of the time!
• Social Media Content – 7 Ways to Repurpose What You’ve Written – More ideas on using what you’ve created over and over and over again. Then repeating.

Getting Help for Your Social Media Effort

• 3 Must-Haves for Driving Social Media – Just being young and having a Facebook page doesn’t mean someone is adept at social media. Look for these three characteristics in your social media team.
• Need a “Repair Your Blog” Tip? – 9 Ideas from Restaurant Impossible – When your blog needs a fix, here are nine ideas to consider when putting together your repair plan.

• Resuscitating a Near-Death Blog - Five steps to getting a floundering blogging effort back on its feet.

• Social Media Expertise – Why Wouldn’t You Demand It? – If someone is trying to sell you social media services, but they don’t seem to engage in social media for their own business, you need to ask some hard questions.
• Who Is Creating Social Media Content in Your Organization? – Depending on what you want from your content marketing, you may have to settle or enlist various people within your organization to participate.

Mike Brown

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If you’re struggling with determining ROI and evaluating its impacts, download “6 Social Media Metrics You Must Track” today!  This article provides a concise, strategic view of the numbers and stories that matter in shaping, implementing, and evaluating your strategy. You’ll learn lessons about when to address measurement strategy, identifying overlooked ROI opportunities, and creating a 6-metric dashboard. Download Your Free Copy of “6 Social Media Metrics You Must Track!”

Mike Brown

Founder of The Brainzooming Group, and a huge fan of strategy, creativity, and innovation. Mike is a frequent speaker on innovation, strategic thinking, and social media.

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“Diversity and Ideas in the Porous Community” will be my talk at the first-ever TEDxWyandotte on April 2, 2013 at Kansas City Kansas Community College (KCKCC).

TEDxWyandotte – Core Impact: Exploring Ideas that Enrich a Community

The theme chosen by TEDxWyandotte curator Shari Wilson, Jay Matlack, Organizing Committee Chair, and the rest of the organizing committee is “Core Impact: Exploring Ideas that Enrich a Community.”

Among the other presenters announced so far are Adam Arredondo, CEO and co-founder of Local Ruckus, and Afro Cuban band, Making Movies. There are a number of other fantastic speakers representing compelling community efforts, but I’m sworn to secrecy until they are officially announced!

This will be my first TEDx talk after attending a variety of TEDxKC events the past several years – both in person and on video. While the TED talks and the now familiar format seems straight forward in its expectations and constraints, it’s a speaking style quite different than I use for my presentations. The TED talks style is so one-way (all eyes on the speaker on the stage in a darkened venue); it flies in the face of creating the diverse interaction we so fundamentally espouse with the Brainzooming methodology. As a result, from a format standpoint, I’m trying to craft a TED talk that looks like a TED talk but is still interactive; it’s a challenge, without a doubt.

My TEDx Talk: Diversity and Ideas in the Porous Community

The topic for my TEDxWyandotte talk is about how the most impactful, strategic change springs from large-scale, diverse, even contradictory, perspectives brought together to forge new ideas. Creating a porous community that readily cultivates diverse thinking is vital to a truly enriched community, i.e. a community were the benefits of great ideas are available to all participants.

And that idea holds intriguing implications for communities and change.

Look up typical definitions of community and you see words and phrases such as:

• Unified
• Common interests and location
• Living in a specific area
• Common history or interests

Not a lot of diversity there – and that’s a problem. Yet we find such excitement in forces pushing diversity and disruption through:

• Crowdsourcing – whether solicited or not
• Large organizations looking outside themselves for answers (and perhaps survival)
• Information available anywhere in the cloud that challenges the idea of place

Wrapping all my thinking together on this topic in a succinct fashion while also drawing some lines through the other presentations will be an exciting opportunity.

And to carry out the theme and raise the stakes just a bit, audience members will be able to select the stories they want to hear during the presentation. That means there are nine different variations of the presentation that are possible. We won’t know which one it will be until the audience makes their decisions throughout the presentation. It’s what I’ve started to call, “Live Blogging.” Just as with hyperlinks in a blog post, the audience community is able to direct the content deeper or move on based on its preferences.

If You’re Near Kansas City, Join Us for TEDxWyandotte

Once again, TEDxWyandotte will be Tuesday, April 2, at 5:30 pm at Kansas City Kansas Community College. If you’re in or around Kansas City, it would be great to have you join us and sell out this first time TEDx event. You can reserve tickets right now! You can also keep up to date on speaker announcements and other news about TEDxWyandotte on Facebook.

And if you have any ideas on the topic, I’m interested in hearing what you think! - Mike Brown

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Mike Brown

Founder of The Brainzooming Group, and a huge fan of strategy, creativity, and innovation. Mike is a frequent speaker on innovation, strategic thinking, and social media.

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In the U.S. nearly twenty cents out of every dollar we spend goes to healthcare. It’s the biggest driver of future budget deficits, the source of most personal bankruptcies, and attempts to reform the system have driven much of the political dialogue—and theater—over the past four years.

Healthcare should be an area ripe for innovation, creativity, and new ways of approaching problems. This past week ten groups presented their best hacks for healthcare innovation at the Hackovate Health Innovation Competition presented by Think Big Partners, sponsored by H&R Block, and hosted by Kansas City’s own Ramsey Moshen. Presenters were vying for a $15,000 grand prize as well as the attention of H&R Block as the company contemplates how it might play in the healthcare arena.

Held in the historic and creatively inspiring Union Station in Kansas City, the finale included presenters from Boston, Los Angeles, Miami, Seattle, Ireland, and Pakistan as well as from the Kansas City area.

Five Ways to Hack the Affordable Care Act

Below, are quick slice synopsis of the five presentations I found most compelling, including what I saw as the most interesting healthcare innovation by each and what I think could come between them and success.

OkCopay, Inc.

What it does: Makes health care pricing more readily available to uninsured and underinsured.

Interesting innovation: Makes health care pricing in the elective areas—dental, vision, cosmetic—truly transparent to people that have little experience or comfort in that arena, particularly the uninsured.

What could go wrong: The revenue comes from provider promotions. That is a labor intensive sell and also might raise credibility issues with users.

Naya Jeevan Rejuvenate

What it does: Provides low-cost health care insurance and care management to traditionally uninsured consumers.

Interesting innovation: Model was developed in Pakistan, now being applied to U.S. market with coming of ACA and health insurance exchanges. Gets companies with big stake in their supply/distribution chain viability, e.g. P&G, to provide subsidies. Uses holistic approach including Nike Fuel band-like device and ePharmacy benefit.

What could go wrong: May not work in the much higher cost U.S. system. Companies may not be as willing to provide subsidies here are they are in developing markets.

SHHADE – Supplying Home Healthcare Alternatives and Dedicated Education

What it does: Takes advantage of the ground-breaking work done by Dr. Jeffrey Brenner in identifying healthcare cost “hotspots.” Brenner’s work in New Jersey found that not only did 20% of patients produce 80% of the costs, but that there was also a geographic component.

Interesting innovation: Uses an intense managed care approach to working with hotspot patients, including mobile primary care service, remote patient monitoring, health coaching, and care coordination. Their geopod approach seems extremely scalable.

What could go wrong: Only get paid if they can reduce cost to insurance companies of the hotspot patients. What if savings aren’t as great as business model predicts?

Aavya Health

What it does: Makes biometric data—which drives more than 70% of healthcare decisions—more useful and understandable for the layman.

Interesting innovation: Can use data ranging from simple height and weight to complex lab results. Translates them into meaningful results, e.g. “Your heart age is X,” and then provides ideas and solutions for making health better.

What could go wrong: Could be hard to get people to input the data. Who provides the revenue stream is somewhat uncertain.

GetHealth

What it does: Provides users both a mobile and web platform to keep track of their healthy and unhealthy activities and compare themselves to friends and family

Interesting innovation: Simple, well-designed and branded approach to making being healthy a friendly, collaborative competition with yourself and those important to you.

What could go wrong: Does it end up being just another seldom used app among the dozens on everyone’s smartphone.

Healthcare Innovation – Is your organization involved?

Major themes of the other presentations revolved around helping people understand and navigate through their insurance options—including the coming health care insurance exchanges—and different ways the health care market can be made more efficient and transparent..

One other important takeaway: there is a striking diversity of organizations working at healthcare innovation. They range from the usual suspects, such as medical groups and healthcare IT suppliers, to the less expected, ranging from experts in customer experience to young college grads from Ireland who decided they and others can use smartphones to be healthier.

And that raises the question: should your organization be part of healthcare innovation, even if you don’t currently think of yourself as being in that space? – Barrett Sydnor

If you enjoyed this article, subscribe to the free Brainzooming blog email updates.

The Brainzooming Group helps make smart organizations more successful by rapidly expanding their strategic options and creating innovative plans they can efficiently implement. Email us at info@brainzooming.com or call us at 816-509-5320 to learn how we can help you enhance your strategy and implementation efforts.

Barrett Sydnor

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As I’ve mentioned, an increasing number of Brainzooming workshops I do use a presentation strategy where audience members select specific topics we cover live. This allows audience members to customize the presentation to topics they find most relevant. Based on reactions to this presentation strategy, people appreciate this relatively rare opportunity to design a speaker’s presentation to maximize the value for their own needs.

One downside to the presentation strategy is preparing so much content that doesn’t get shared.

For example, during the recent PR Consultants Group workshop on new product launch challenges, the group didn’t select an intriguing strategic thinking exercise to identify or enhance the product benefit statements supporting a new product or service. The strategic thinking exercise (called “That’s What You Say”) is a variation of the “What’s It Like” exercise and another we use to identify less-obvious potential competitive threats for brands.

How the “That’s What You Say” Strategic Thinking Exercise Works

For the new product or service you’re addressing, identify as many potential product benefits as possible. If a product is being re-launched, include both product benefits you’ve highlighted previously plus others that have been ignored, for whatever reason.

After you’ve exhausted the full list of potential benefits, generalize each of the product benefits, as necessary, to more broadly describe them. Then, for each benefit, identify various non-competitive products, brands, and companies making comparable brand benefit appeals – whether they are being made to your target audience or not.

After developing this expanded list of brands, look at how they tackle communicating comparable brand benefits in ways that are new or more distinct than those currently used in your market.

An Example of “That’s What You Say” in the Toothpaste Market

Suppose you’re launching a new product in the toothpaste market. Competitive brands talk about delivering a variety of product benefits, including:

• Whiter teeth
• Brighter teeth
• Fewer Cavities
• Pain Relief

Most of these brand benefits are toothpaste-focused, so they need some generalization to effectively use them in this strategic thinking exercise.

The list below shows these typical toothpaste product benefits generalized (bolded words) to be more broadly applicable. Additionally, for each benefit in the list, there are one or more other brand categories making comparable product benefit claims.

• Whiter – Laundry Detergent
• Brighter – Light Bulbs, Laundry Detergent
• Lower Treatment / Repair Costs – Preventive Medicine, Auto Preventive Maintenance
• Pain Relief – Aspirin, Ibuprofen, Ointments

Armed with this list of seven other product categories, marketers can look for new strategic inspiration outside their brand category and consider how they could adapt how other brands are addressing comparably positioned product benefits. - Mike Brown

If you enjoyed this article, subscribe to the free Brainzooming email updates.

The Brainzooming Group helps make smart organizations more successful by rapidly expanding their strategic options and creating innovative plans they can efficiently implement. Email us at info@brainzooming.com or call us at 816-509-5320 to learn how we can help you enhance your strategy and implementation efforts.

Mike Brown

Founder of The Brainzooming Group, and a huge fan of strategy, creativity, and innovation. Mike is a frequent speaker on innovation, strategic thinking, and social media.

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Brainzooming regular contributor and retail marketing sage, Woody Bendle bring a fantastic quantitative perspective to his analysis of Super Bowl Advertising. Woody used a rating scale exploring relationship and creative strengths to assess this year’s crop of Super Bowl advertising entries. Check out Woody’s methodology and see how your favorites fared with his analysis:

Mike reached out the weekend before the Super Bowl and asked if I’d be interested in writing a blog post about this year’s Super Bowl advertising.  I had no idea what I would write but I’ve always found the pressure of a deadline invigorating so without even giving it much thought, I immediately said yes!

OK… so now what?

Super Bowl Advertising by the Numbers

It is estimated that there were approximately 120 million viewers for the Super Bowl this year.  Come Monday morning, these viewers talk not only about the game, but also the Super Bowl advertising.  This conversation happens from the water cooler to the boardroom.  Everyone watching instantly becomes an armchair Creative Director with a lot of advertising opinions, some favorable, and some…. well, not so much.  What do they know anyway!?  Oh yeah, they’re actually potential customers!  That’s right, the folks who Super Bowl advertising was, in theory, created for in the first place!

This year, the average 30 second spot in the Super Bowl cost about $4 million to air.  This is up a staggering 14% from last year!  Talk about inflation!!!  Four Million Dollars for 30 seconds.  Man, that ad better work!  OK… maybe there’s a little pressure associated with creating an impactful advertisement for the Super Bowl.

So let’s pretend for a moment, that you had a spare $4 million lying around.  And for some CRAZY reason, you decided to run a commercial during the Super Bowl.  I already noted that you’re going to have 120 million people judging you, and they’re going to be comparing you with some advertising heavyweights such Budweiser, Doritos, Volkswagen, E*Trade and probably every car manufacturer on the planet.

Still feeling up to the challenge?

Oh, and remember that some of those 120 million watching the Super Bowl are potential and current customers (see above)!  And, last but not least, some of those 120 million people are your bosses, shareholders, and board members – and they’re going to want to know if your Super Bowl advertising “worked.”

Are you prepared to answer that question?

Measuring Potential Advertising Effectiveness

In my opinion, the goal of TV advertising should be to create (or build upon) a profitable relationship between your brand and your consumers, and to clearly register a memorable (preferably favorable) impression that can build upon your brands equity over time.

In television advertising, there is usually a very STRONG relationship between creative execution (that is aligned with the brand’s personality and promise) and the ad’s ability to create (or further build upon) a relationship with your brand.  And, being the geek that I am, I decided to perform a highly unscientific quantitative evaluation of the Super Bowl advertising this year with an extremely unrepresentative sample (13 people made up of my family and some friends – with a slight sample bias towards high school students).  Well, maybe we’re not all that unrepresentative.  We do live smack-dab in the geographic middle of the United States, and I suppose that make us the “average” in some way, shape, or form.

OK, so the objective of my little Super Bowl advertising research project was simply to demonstrate the relationship between creative execution and relationship potential.  To do this, we rated each ad that ran from the kickoff through the end of the Super Bowl.  And, each ad was rated on five simple measures (that’s over 3,000 scores I had to crunch).

Relationship Potential was measured through:

1)     Consideration – “The ad made me interested in buying from this company (or buying this product)”

2)     Connection – “The ad made me like this company or product”

Creative Impact Potential was measured through:

3)     Message Clarity – “I clearly knew who the ad was for and what this ad was trying to tell me”

4)     Likability – “How much I liked this ad (or not)”

5)     Buzz Worthy – “Is this ad worth sharing online with my (Facebook) friends”

Let’s see how your ad did!

By plotting Super Bowl advertising based on its Relationship Potential score vs. its Creative Impact score, we end up with a 2 x 2 grid that helps us quickly see who the Super Bowl ad winners and losers were (at least according to my family and friends) this year.  And, as we hypothesized earlier, there is a VERY STRONG relationship between an Ad’s Creative Impact and its Relationship Potential!

The top marks for this year’s ads goes to Best Buy, Doritos (goat ad), Budweiser and Taco Bell.  These ads scored well for both their ability to build a relationship with the audience, and their strong creative execution.

The bottom marks go to Cars.com, MiO Fit, Bud Light (Voo-Doo Dolls), GoDaddy.com (Walter), Gildan T-Shirts and Mercedes Benz (although I gotta give them props for the Stones tune!).  These ads were rated poorly for both Creative Impact and their Relationship Building Potential.

And by the way, the Calvin Klein ad in the Super Bowl did very well with the High School girls (I’m expecting that to be “shared” and “liked” a lot of Facebook over the coming days by teenage girls).

So how did my family and friends do?  Do our ratings reflect your opinions? - Woody Bendle

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