6:00 pm EST / 5:00 pm CST (This is the official broadcast start, although we’ll be tweeting before the game broadcast)
Participating on Twitter with Hashtags
To participate in the BZ Bowl, simply add #BZBowl to your tweets.
To get your tweet seen in other Super Bowl Twitter streams, you can also use: #BrandBowl, #SuperBowlAds, #SBXLV, or #ADBowl
There’s a widget at the bottom of this post to track #BZBowl tweets.
Beyond using Twitter,Tweetdeck, or Hootsuite, Tweetchat is a convenient site to log in with the #BZBowl hashtag to track and share your tweets on Super Bowl ads. The great thing about Tweetchat is it automatically adds the #BZBowl hashtag to each tweet so you don’t have to remember.
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.
With all that, it’s a pleasure to turn today’s Brainzooming over to Max to share some of the work he’s done on ads and spokespeople as it relates to who we’ll be seeing in this year’s Super Bowl ads:
I don’t know where Peyton Manning plans to spend Super Bowl Sunday. It won’t be the billion dollar JerryDome in Dallas unless he buys a ticket. Nope, his team lost in the first week of the playoffs. But Peyton also won’t be on your TV screen in a Super Bowl ad with any of the seemingly hundreds of commercials he stars in. No DirecTV. No Sprint. No Sony. No Xbox. Sadly, no MasterCard– and those are some of the funniest ads ever produced. While Super Bowl Sunday is the biggest game of the year as far as TV commercials are concerned, Peyton will be on the sidelines. So will most of his fellow current NFL stars. And surprisingly, the rest of the top sports endorsers will also find themselves spectators and not participants in the multi-million dollar television Super Bowl ad extravaganza.
According to a recent poll conducted by Harris Interactive, 25% of women and 12% of all 100+ million Super Bowl viewers watch mainly for the commercials. They will see close to 50 minutes of commercials in the game. The audience will see a significant number of celebrities but very few athletes.
I’ve tracked celebrity appearances in Super Bowl advertising for the past four years. The roster of NFL celebs features Troy Aikman, Jimmy Johnson, Don Shula, Bill Parcells, Mike Ditka, Jim McMahon and Howie Long. They all have one thing in common. They’ve all retired from the NFL. Bret Favre, Troy Polamalu and Ray Lewis have at least one Super Bowl ad appearance in the last few years. Tim Tebow appeared in the Focus on the Family commercial last year. That drew quite a reaction, much of it negative.
The NBA’s Dwayne Wade, Charles Barkley and Shaquille O’Neal have all popped up in Super Bowl commercials. MLB’s Derek Jeter and Henry Aaron made it to the big show.
Super Bowl advertisers steer away from NFL stars for several reasons:
The extraordinary cost of ads in the game stands out. Paying a player to be a pitchman costs big bucks.
It’s hard to find time during the season to shoot a fresh spot for the game. And the Super Bowl is all about fresh spots.
Advertisers can’t predict which teams are going to have a good season, which players will suffer injuries and which players will become the lightning rods of the media and public opinion (see Exhibit A, Jay Cutler).
As a result sponsoring brands may shy away from using players during this huge event. In their place, Super Bowl sponsors seem eager to upstage each other with creative spectaculars starring furry creatures or to merely maintain their normal advertising message strategy as safer alternatives to NFL pitchmen.
Contrast that to NASCAR and the Daytona 500, often called the Super Bowl of motorsports. On average, more than 15 percent of all Daytona 500 commercials feature one or more NASCAR drivers. While one could suggest it is because those drivers have a contract with a sponsor, their appearances are rarely for their main sponsor. Popular drivers such as Dale Earnhardt Jr., Tony Stewart or Kasey Kahne might appear in as many as four different commercials on race day. On average 18 different drivers appear in ads during the 500, and that list comes from a roster of 43 as compared to the more than 1500 NFL players. In at least two of the past four years, more NASCAR drivers appeared in Super Bowl Ads than NFL players.
“In football you’re a fan of the helmet,” said Ken Cohn, vice president of business development for Millsport Motorsports, a Charlotte-based race marketing company. NASCAR is different as fans worship the drivers. “They are seen as more human. They are normal-sized guys driving cars. We can relate to that,” says Cohn.
As I mentioned earlier, celebrities will make significant appearances in this year’s ads:
The e-Trade baby is moving into the superstar category.
Look for Ozzy Osbourne and Justin Bieber to team up in a Best Buy spot.
What Super Bowl watch party could be complete without a few titillating seconds of that All-American Go-Daddy girl, Danica Patrick. She’ll be joined by Biggest Loser trainer Jillian Michaels. Be still my heart.
Roseanne Barr will take over in this year’s Snickers ad, taking over for Betty White, who parlayed her Super Bowl fame from 2010 into another career revival and a guest host stint on Saturday Night Live. I can hear the Snickers already.
The use of celebrities in advertising has long represented a modest upside versus a significant downside. For every Bill Cosby and Jell-O or Michael Jordan and Gatorade, we find O. J., Tiger, Lindsay Lohan or Charlie Sheen. The National Beef Council’s spokesman Robert Mitchum died of a heart attack. It replaced him with Cybill Shepherd who the media soon found was a vegetarian. Upon further review, maybe we’re better off without more celebrities in Super Bowl ads. – Max Utsler
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.
Pass the sheets out at your party and give out prizes to the party guests who have the sharpest eyes for clichés and score the most points overall and during each time period.
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.
I didn’t create a personal top ten favorite Brainzooming blog posts list in 2009. That’s probably because it takes longer than you’d ever think it should to prepare one. Yet it seemed the right time for one in 2010 since this year has been filled with so much change, learning, and growth.
My approach in selecting these posts was no more scientific than making several passes through every post from 2010 to narrow the list to those having the most memorable impact on me.
It was only after the list was narrowed to ten posts that the general themes of “connections” and “new types of friendships” were evident to me. In thinking about 2010, however, no themes could have been more appropriate. Here’s a walk back through 2010 from a Brainzooming point of view:
This early 2010 reflection touches on how social media has changed my view of what a friend is. Little did I know then, it would set the stage for my favorite posts throughout the rest of 2010. The connections to truly remarkable people around the globe that have developed through social networking would have been hard to imagine 10 years ago. For that reason alone, I’m glad 2010 finally arrived.
One of my favorite things about long-time friend and strategic mentor Chuck Dymer is his incredible ability to take every day events and highlight the lessons they reveal. Chuck emailed me after this post remarking about the connection I’d drawn between reading a part of the Palm Sunday passion narrative and the importance of team members practicing every part of their team’s activity. That email recognition was a huge compliment coming from Chuck!
This post was intensely personal, written the night Coco (“my cat”) passed away after a protracted illness. I tried to pull some Brainzooming-appropriate lessons from her adoption story to justify publishing it, but the accompanying video is what I keep coming back to in the months since. Our remaining cat Clementine (who Twitter friends have named “Director of Enthusiasm” at The Brainzooming Group) spontaneously reacted to a video of CoCo I was watching by pawing at the screen. After she walks off, she then walks into the previously shot video to see Coco. There’s no way to plan this stuff out!
This story is a great example of how you can connect and mutually benefit others through social media. When I expressed frustration with a MarketingProfs virtual event presentation, Lauren Vargas of Radian 6, one of the presenters, reached out to initiate a conversation. We emailed perspectives back and forth, learned from one another, and have established a stronger connection which has certainly benefited me, and I hope, Lauren as well. Here’s to the new, smart friends social networking can help you develop!
This is an instance of a much-appreciated respite from the solitary nature of blogging. Having a week where a number of people made the effort to reach out to let me know the blog had touched them in some way was perhaps my most blessed week of 2010. If what I’m writing isn’t helping someone, it’s not worth doing. You can’t necessarily put a quantitative measure on that principle, but it’s the most vital blogging metric for me.
This video post shows some pure fun at a Hilton Hotel in Minneapolis, where new washrag animals appeared daily during my stay. It’s an example of a lasting connection where familiarity and bonding were created without benefit of direct, in-person contact. This story has easily earned a place in my creativity and innovation presentations as an example of a frontline employee taking the initiative to create a high-impact customer experience in a memorable, fun way.
Lynn Keenum always makes me laugh. Watch this video of him telling a story about Tom Peters. You’ll laugh too…especially if you’ve seen Tom Peters speak. This is one for my all-time smile file!
You’d think I spent all my time in Minnesota this year since this is yet another Minneapolis-based post. Suffice it to say I’m a Mall of America fan, both for its in-person experience and the online connection they established with me by listening, reaching out, and interacting. Lisa Grimm, pr specialist at the Mall, has gone out of her way to solidify my fandom, confirming this story’s place in my social media strategy talks.
Even though I was confident in leaving the corporate world when I did in 2009, there were still moments of apprehension about both the present and certainly the future. This account of a big confirmatory moment in early 2010 was testament to my most important lesson learned in 2010: everything’s connected to something, even if it isn’t apparent the moment it’s happening.
With that, I better get started on 2011. Hope you’ll be there with me! – Mike Brown
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 brainzooming@gmail.com or call 816-509-5320 to learn how we’ve developed integrated social media strategy for other brands and can do the same for yours.
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.
Following up yesterday’s personal strategic TEDxKC reflection, today’s TEDxKC review focuses on specific presentations at the August 12, 2010 strategic, innovation-rich event. In keeping with the brisk TED/TEDx format (no presentations are intended to be over 20 minutes), here are brief highlights from TEDxKC:
Francis Cholle – Intuitive Intelligence Is What the World Needs Now
Author Francis Cholle’s main premise is strategic business thinking typically ignores creativity and doesn’t recognize the importance of the unconscious in how we process information. His model for intuitive intelligence rests on 4 strategies:
Think Holistically – Look at situations from all possible perspectives.
Think Paradoxically – As you look from different perspectives, allow yourself to accept blatantly contradictory elements co-existing together.
Listen for the Unusual – Pay less attention to thinking and more attention to feelings our brands’ customers are having.
Lead by Influence – Surrender control and give people the autonomy to step off into the unknown.
Given this strategic approach is at the heart of what we’re trying to do with innovation at Brainzooming, his talk really resonated with me.
Jane McGonigal – More Online Gaming Is What the World Needs Now
From her innovative perspective as an online game designer, in the only video presentation at TEDxKC, Jane McGonigal shared her firm belief the world is spiraling to its imminent collapse and can only be saved by the types of epic wins taking place 24/7 in online gaming.
She shared how online gaming allows people to rapidly try, experiment, and learn effective innovative problem-solving in epic situations. Online games do this particularly well because they are built around epic stories requiring epic strategies, players are matched to challenges suiting their talents with tons of collaborators, and feedback is constantly provided to innovate, adjust, improve, and succeed.
In the past several years, she’s concentrated on developing online games focused on solving major world problems – energy (World without Oil), human extinction (Superstruct), and the crisis in Africa (Evoke).
Her global prescription is for the people of the world to spend 21 billion hours per week in online gaming to innovate and create the epic wins which will allow the world to survive. While my initial reaction was very much, “WTF,” I’m so thankful Jane McGonigal’s video was included at TEDxKC. She ultimately helped me see a previously unsuspected connection between online gaming, strategy, and rapid process improvement techniques and how they could work together to catalyze innovative global problem-solving strategies.
Dr. Michael Wesch – Meaning Makers Are What the World Needs Now
Kansas State University anthropology professor Michael Wesch, the YouTube star of the evening, spoke to the need for individuals to move from knowledgeable to knowledge able, with skills and critical thinking capabilities to successfully filter the blast of media we all receive daily. As he pointed out, technology has wrought absolutely revolutionary expansions in our capability to:
Connect
Organize
Share
Collect
Collaborate
Publish
Importantly though, Wesch’s point was while technology makes it easy to perform these six activities, they are tremendously hard to do well. The challenge then is using the technical tools to become compelling meaning makers and not just meaning seekers.
Mike McCamon – A Way to Deal with Waste Is What the World Needs Now
I have at least a passing knowledge of McCamon’swater.org organization through meeting Erin Swanson of water.org (@ExplodingSoul on Twitter) regularly at Social Media Club of Kansas City breakfasts. For whatever reason, McCamon’s TEDxKC presentation was incredibly brief. It provided staggering statistics about the amount of solid human waste that’s left untreated globally in a world where more people have access to mobile phones than toilets. His contention is the issue doesn’t get more attention because it’s a private one whose solutions are realized household-by-household and the very visual celebratory experience which exists with clean water solutions (i.e., kids playing in water) doesn’t exist with solid waste solutions.
At one point during TEDxKC, McCamon said, “Someone always lives downstream.” While the comment was delivered most directly to water and sanitation issues, its much larger application is for all processes globally, big to small, where one group or individual tries to get the good stuff for themselves only to let the next person down the line deal with the negative aftermath.
Dr. Brené Brown – Vulnerability Is What the World Needs Now
At the core of Dr. Brown’s comments is the contention we are losing our tolerance for vulnerability. Rather than vulnerability being synonymous with weakness, Brown sees vulnerability as the birthplace ofjoy,creativity, faith, and many other very positive aspects of life. As the rejection of vulnerability has spread, we now find:
Joy has shifted to foreboding
Disappointment has developed as a lifestyle
Perfection (or the perception of perfection) is used as a false shield
Extremism surfaces as a defense mechanism
Medications, alcohol, drugs, credit, and all types of other things are used to numb the pain
She challenged the TEDxKC audience to regain joy in our lives by practicing gratitude and honoring the ordinary in life since filling emotional reservoirs with joy and love is critical to getting through bad things which may eventually happen.
Quixotic Fusion – Both a Skeptical and a Hopeful Eye Is What the World Needs Now
This intriguing performance art group Quixotic Fusion opened and closed TEDxKC. It’s important for me to say upfront, “I don’t get dance.” I so don’t understand dancing, I’ve threatened to make myself take a class about choreography to force at least some better strategic sense of it.
As a result of my cluelessness about dancing, let me just say the take-away for me of the Quixotic Fusion TEDxKC performance was a strategic reminder about illusion. You can put separate elements together (i.e. a dancer and pre-programmed light patterns), and with skill, you can create the appearance of a causal relationship that doesn’t really exist. If you’re prone to seeing causality in everything, the strategic message is be careful about jumping to conclusions. If, however, you’re a literalist who thinks everything has to be exactly as it is, realize you have some creative room to play with, so take advantage of it.
That’s the presentation recap from TEDxKC, a tremendously content-rich strategic innovation event! Thanks to sponsors VML, Populous, The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, and Harvest Productions for staging TEDxKC for the Kansas City community! – Mike Brown
When it comes to conferences, high impact presentations, and live event social media content, The Brainzooming Group is expert at shaping the right strategy and implementation to create unique attendee experiences before, during, and after an event. Email us at brainzooming@gmail.com or call 816-509-5320 to learn how we can do the same for your event!
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.
Thanks to Brenda Bethman, I received a last minute ticket toTEDxKC last Thursday at The Nelson-Atkins Museum in Kansas City. Titled “What the World Needs Now,” five speakers (four live, one on video) and a visual/musical/performance art group presented rapid-fire perspectives not really answering the title question – since it wasn’t stated as a question – but more as persuasive speeches on innovative global strategies in a college communications class.
The Set-Up
That isn’t to say TEDxKC wasn’t thought-provoking; it was just never designed as an interactive dialogue on our collective future. Unless you call the audience mingling and getting to write on a big poster what we think the world needs now after the event (all over 1 free drink) an interactive experience.
TEDxKC was certainly much anticipated (although not necessarily well-publicized) in town, with the original 300 free tickets for the Nelson Gallery auditorium being claimed in an hour. Another 500-600 people were ultimately accommodated via video feed in a separate Nelson viewing gallery.
Personal Resonance
Because of a client meeting, I never had an opportunity to vie for a TEDxKC ticket. Having known people who have attended TED and TEDx events, however, TEDxKC certainly felt like an innovation-rich event to attend. Looking back in light of my personal experience and the relevance of the innovation messages, a TEDxKC ticket materializing Thursday afternoon couldn’t have been an accident.
The strategic, unifying thread for meat TEDxKC was the speakers articulating aspects of themes touched on and evolving within the Brainzooming and Aligning Your Life’s Work blogs over several years.
As I’ve said, writing a blog, absent all the other human interactions which are vital to surround it, is a pretty isolated experience. With my professional situation changing so much in the past year(moving from a corporation to pursue The Brainzooming Group full-time), that’s been even truer. The original target persona for the blog was me: someone in a not particularly innovative or creatively-oriented organization wanting to grow, develop, and have a bigger positive strategic impact on those around them.
As my life has changed, I’ve wondered whether my new perspectives resonate with all of you who are so generous to share your time in following Brainzooming. While new innovation-oriented themes have emerged for me professionally and found their way into the blog (thus all the social media and here’s what The Brainzooming Group does content lately), it was tremendously helpful as TEDxKC put into a global context the core strategic themes which mean so much to me personally and professionally:
The strategic innovation messages at TEDxKC really resonated, serving as catalysts for my thinking right now. Tomorrow, we’ll recap the great TEDxKC speakers and the important innovation messages they shared. – Mike Brown
When it comes to conferences, high impact presentations, and live event social media content, The Brainzooming Group is expert at shaping the right strategy and implementation to create unique attendee experiences before, during, and after an event. Email us at brainzooming@gmail.com or call 816-509-5320 to learn how we can do the same for your event!
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.
Under the conference’s “Engage” theme, we’ll lead a team of great business marketing, communications, and social media professionals covering the conference through live tweeting, blogging, video, photography, LinkedIn, Facebook, and Foursquare, among other things!
A wide array of social media efforts will provide a content-rich experience to both attendees and those who can only attend the BMA conference virtually. Our team will be adding to the conference by allowing you to:
Track Presenters and Presentations: All social media feeds from this stellar B2B learning event can be found at the conference’s Engage aggregator site. You can also track tweeting activity here or on the main Brainzooming page. The conference Twitter hashtag is #BMAEngage. We’ll also be using codes for specific sessions to focus the broad content.
Spread the Learnings: When you see information that resonates with you, share it with your own network through retweets and other social bookmarking.
Participate in LinkedIn Discussions in the BMAEngage Group: LinkedIn members are invited to join the BMAEngage group on LinkedIn. You’ll be able to participate in extended discussions with presenters and other group members on the B2B marketing topics addressed throughout the event.
Share Your Own Perspective on B2B Topics: We’ll be linking from the main site to B2B and other relevant marketing topics on the web. If you’d like to share your perspectives, leave a link to your blog post in the comments section here, and we’ll get related links shared on the conference website. You can also leave comments on the BMAEngage Facebook wall, in addition to checking out other attendees, discussions, events, and content about the conference.
Follow the Business Marketers Tweeting about the Conference: Through an online application called BlastFollow, you can follow everyone tweeting with the #BMAEngage hashtag. Simply go to the Blastfollow website, enter the conference hashtag (#BMAEngage), your twitter id and password, and BlastFollow does the rest.
For those who are able to attend in person, there are even more ways to get engaged with social media effort:
Tweet with Us - Do your own live tweeting during the event using the #BMAEngage hashtag. When you do, there’s a great chance you’ll see your tweets on screens throughout the venue. We’ll be using the Wiffiti application from LocaModa to post tweets and share them with conference attendees.
Shoot Your Own Videos and Photos to Document the Conference – Just as with blog posts, we’re eager to have attendees share videos and images of presenters, other attendees, and the event. You can stop by the Engage Social Media Station to upload your videos and photos or send links to BMAEngage@gmail.com.
Check in on Foursquare (and Let’s All Get a Swarm Badge) - We’ve set up a FourSquare location specifically for BMAEngage at the Swissotel. Be sure to check-in daily, to let everyone (including your boss) know you’re present and accounted for with all the great sessions at BMAEngage.
Learn and Share Your Knowledge with the Social Media Team - The social media team is comprised of some great marketing, communications, and social media professionals. The conference provides a great opportunity to network, share best practices, and talk about new ideas on various topics. You’ll be able to pick out the social media team with our black “Engage” shirts throughout the conference.
Let Others Know You’re Engaged in Social Media – The social media team will have “Engage” buttons for anyone who’s tweeting, blogging, or creating other attendee-generated content. Simply stop by the Engage Social Media Station or hit up one of the social media team members for your button…once you engage in social media!
Join Us for a Pre-Conference Tweetup Tuesday Night – For anyone at the conference or in Chicago on Tuesday, just us for a Pre-Conference Social Media Tweetup at 6:30 p.m., Tuesday, June 2. It will be at the Palm Restaurant in the Swissotel. Anyone at the conference and friends of the Brainzooming blog are welcome to join us!
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.
Super Bowl XLV is today, and you’re invited to join us for #BZBowl 2011 as a great group of cool marketers, branding experts, creative instigators, authors, and pop culture mavens create a running commentary on how brands will be using the biggest advertising, marketing, (and social media?) event of the year.
On Wednesday, 
