Doritos won with its “Crash the Super Bowl” consumer-generated commercials. One spot featured a dog who bribed a man with Doritos to conceal the whereabouts of the family cat. A second spot featured a grandmother who sling-shots a baby in a swinging seat toward a tree fort to grab a bag of Doritos from a little boy. The second and third place overall finishers were Swedish apparel retailer H&M with a provocative spot starring soccer star David Beckham modeling underwear, and Chrysler, with a powerful message about the American economic recovery.  The Chrysler commercial starred legendary actor/director Clint Eastwood. The spots appeared during a closely contested game between the New York Giants and the New England Patriots.

 BRAND BOWL TOP SCORERS
When all was said and done, the top ten brands (a combination of volume and popularity) were:

1. Doritos (48,811 Tweets) (Sentiment +29%)
2.  H&M (44,031 Tweets) (Sentiment +14%)
3. Chrysler (33,943 Tweets) (Sentiment +10%)
4. Pepsi (39,765 Tweets) (Sentiment +8%)
5. Chevrolet (36,934 Tweets) (Sentiment +17%)
6. M&M’s (18,316 Tweets) (Sentiment +41%)
7. Budweiser (18,916 Tweets) (Sentiment +12%)
8. VW (17,131 Tweets) (Sentiment +26%)
9. Coke (18,463 Tweets) (Sentiment +4%)
10. Bud Light (15,298 Tweets) (Sentiment +18%)

MOST LIKED BRANDS
Those with the highest number of “positive” tweets were:

1.      M&M’s (Sentiment +41%)

2.      Best Buy (Sentiment +30%)

3.      Doritos (Sentiment +29%)

LEAST LIKED BRANDS
Those with the highest number of “negative” tweets were:

1. Go Daddy (Sentiment -10%)
2. Cars.com (Sentiment -2%)
3. Lexus (Sentiment -1%)

MOST VOLUME OF TWEETS
The most talked-about brands (those with the highest number of overall tweets) were:

1.      Doritos  (48,811 Tweets)

2.      H&M (44,031 Tweets)

3.      Pepsi  (39,765 Tweets)

Mullen and Boston.com, one of the nation’s largest regional news portals, teamed up to present BrandBowl2012, a Twitter/Super Bowl experience that used real-time analytics from SalesForce Radian6 to determine which brands were getting the most and least amount of commentary and which brands were getting the most positive and negative tweets during the telecast. BrandBowl2012 ranked the commercials using some of the most comprehensive social media metrics available to analyze the full Twitter data stream.

This is the fourth year that Mullen has run Brand Bowl and its second year of partnering with Boston.com to create the online experience where participants could view their tweets and see the dynamic brand rankings during the game. New features this year included:

• “Head-to-head” statistical breakdowns between brands
• A “featured tweet” section that highlighted funny and insightful tweets from participants
• A streamlined Brand Bowl mobile experience so users could more easily see the live rankings and tweet their votes.

My, has Mullen come a long way. What was once merely a reliable regional shop is now attracting the hottest digital brands around — including Google and LivingSocial — and gets entrusted with international campaigns despite the fact it doesn’t have any offices abroad. In 2011, Mullen found 20% revenue growth while having a lot of fun with its work. For Zappos, it executed a zany homepage takeover on Yahoo’s website so viewers saw a scantily clad man running across the screen. The point was to demonstrate that Zappos is about a lot more than shoes. To get the word out that JetBlue lets passengers’ first bag fly free, it set up an exhibit of celebrity luggage in Los Angeles that also raised $50,000 for DoSomething.org. Its biggest project was leading the international brand launch for Google’s Galaxy Nexus phone, for which Mullen’s creative is running across four continents. The agency is charting the course for the next generation of leadership, making Alex Leikikh president in its Boston office as Joe Grimaldi moved to Chairman-CEO.

Big congrats to all of the agencies profiled in the A-List issue, in particular McGarryBowen, Ad Age’s Agency of the Year, and Droga5, Creativity’s Agency of the Year. Winning and being bold was their recipe for success.

Hey, speaking of beatbox videos, did you see this one we did for Google?

Our digital holiday project was called Snowify.me, an experimental HTML5 holiday card creator made with Google Maps v3. As you’ll see when you go on the site, you simply type in the location you want to snowify, decorate, and share your panoramic card with the world. And the gallery of decorations includes all kinds of fun icons from 2011, including the lovely newlywed Royal Couple and your friendly “Occupiers.”

A stealth creative and technical team at Mullen put Snowify together and, as you can read on Creativity_Unbound, this kind of was the “Accidental Holiday Card.”

Happy Holidays All!  Let it snowify!

iRobot Roomba® 780

We’re cleaning up the place with our new Roomba having just been named agency-of-record for iRobot Corporation’s North American business. It’s the coolest company – in addition to the Roomba^® vacuum cleaning robot, iRobot created the Scooba^® floor washing robot, Verro^® pool cleaning robot and the iRobot Looj^® gutter cleaning robot.

“Mullen demonstrated a sincere passion for our brand,” said Howard Leyda, Vice President of Marketing, Home Robot division at iRobot. “Their creative vision will powerfully communicate the benefits of iRobot to consumers. They work with numerous innovative, category-changing brands and will be a strong partner as we evolve and grow the iRobot enterprise.”

“iRobot is a cool company that makes ingenious products,” said Kristen Cavallo, Chief Strategy Officer at Mullen. “We look forward to creating advertising as innovative and effective as the products themselves.”

We’ll be doing lots of fun things for these guys – brand planning, creative, media and analytics.  That is until they build the fully-robotic ad agency.

Here’s what we won:

• Best Use of Out-of-Home – JetBlue “Taking it to the Streets,” where we introduced JetBlue’s new travel service by converting bus shelters into mini vacation hubs.
• Best Use of New and Non-Traditional Media – JetBlue “Celebrity Baggage,” where we introduced JetBlue’s free baggage service in LA via interactive outdoor media which linked to mobile, by which consumers could bid on celebrity’s travel bags in real time.
• Best Use of Media Research – for Barnes & Noble/Nook
• The Risky Business Award – Zappos “Naked Man,” where we convinced web channel Yahoo, to let our Naked Man (Arthur) run across their homepage.

• The Rising Star Award – Katie Thompson, VP Associate Director, Digital Media, for her work on JetBlue.

The awards were part of Media Innovation Day, hosted by the AdClub of Boston.  It featured speakers from XBOX Live, Yahoo and Mullen client Glenn Kaplan, VP, Creative Director at Barnes & Noble.

Congrats to all the finalists and winners in the Maven Awards and good luck to the AdClub in the kick-off of the big annual Media Auction.

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Are any of these topics on your mind, impacting your business?  Then we implore you to come to FutureM, an intellectual marketing mash-up in Boston, September 12 – 15.  All of these subjects will be discussed and debated by some of the brightest thinkers in technology, media, academia and marketing.

It’s the Boston equivalent of SXSW and TED and this video gives you a taste of what to expect.

There are quite a few events to choose from. Here are some that we’re particularly excited about:

Start Something: Speed Networking for Innovators and Aspiring Change-Makers
A rare opportunity for Gen Y entrepreneurs or aspiring “creators” to meet with C-level execs for advice, dialog, interaction. Gen Y up-and-comers will get a chance to vet ideas, make connections, interact with founders and entrepreneurs. Organized by The Next Great Generation, innovators on call include:

Digital Media Convergence: Startups, VCs & Agencies
Traditional media outlets are struggling to implement successful digital media strategies and there is a new wave of media startups paving the way in news consumption. Dive into how advertisers are keeping up with digital news. What is effective, what is not? Learn from new media startups, digital agencies and venture capitalists on what to look for in the new media realm. The event partner for this is BostInnovation and Mullen’s Chief Innovation Officer Edward Boches will be one of the featured panelists.

Opening night with:

• Cannes Lion Festival speaker and Director of Contagious – Jessica Greenwood
• The SVP, Marketing for ESPN and one of Fast Company’s 100 Most Creative People in Business – Carol Kruse
• Wired Magazine contributor and Author of The Art of Immersion – Frank Rose
• Chief Innovation Officer for VivaKi – Rishad Tobaccowala

Created by the Massachusetts Innovation & Technology Exchange (MITX), the nation’s largest nonprofit trade association for the Internet business and marketing industry industry – and a group of leading marketing thinkers, FutureM’s 2010 debut attracted over 3,000 attendees to more than 50 events and programs. The inspiration for the event came from the distinct nature of the Massachusetts community: a thriving ecosystem of innovators in media, technology and marketing, fueled by a rich pipeline of next-generation leaders in the area’s schools.

This is Year 4 of the National Suit Drive, which has won a bunch of awards for cause-related marketing. Thanks to everyone who has or will support this worthy campaign. Donations will be accepted up until August 31.