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.

Brand Bowl 2012 Game Day Site

OK football and TV advertising fans, the game day edition of Brand Bowl 2012 is live. Mullen and Boston.com together have launched Brand Bowl 2012, a social media event using Salesforce Radian6 to analyze the Twitter commentary and rate the most popular and disastrous Super Bowl TV commercials.

Realizing how social media has changed the way fans enjoy the game, Mullen launched the original Brand Bowl four years ago when Twitter was just a niche platform. Boston.com, one of the nation’s largest regional news portals, began hosting the information on their site last year. The virtual event at BrandBowl2012.com features an up-to-the-minute stream of Tweets about Super Bowl commercials to determine which brands are the most and least effective. Last year, over 300,000 Tweets were counted to determine the winner of Brand Bowl 2011. Chrysler finished number one and Cars.com finished at the bottom in last year’s rankings. The brands are ranked based on volume (who has the most/least chatter) and sentiment (who has the most/least positive and negative comments).

“Advertising is social, and given that Twitter’s active user base continues to grow and that armchair advertising critics are an expanding population in social media, we expect to get some outstanding data this year,” said Edward Boches, chief innovation officer at Mullen. “The most savvy brands are recognizing the power of social media and have released their commercials before the Super Bowl to build the buzz online, and have been orchestrating elaborate social media campaigns to maximize the impact of their multi-million dollar investments.”

“We’re excited to host Brand Bowl again this year with Mullen, and it gives us yet another opportunity to provide our readers with the interactive experience that they’ve come to expect from Boston.com,” said Ron Agrella, editor of Boston.com. “We aim to not just provide content, but to engage our readers in the public conversation, especially surrounding a significant event like the Super Bowl.”

New features this year include:

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

Participation in Brand Bowl is easy. During the game, users can reference a specific commercial or simply include the hashtag #brandbowl in their Tweets to voice their opinions. The Tweets will be streamed live on Boston.com and a new mobile-friendly version of the Brand Bowl site during the game.

The single page feature also includes videos of the commercials and lets readers share Tweets, post images, follow conversations and see what other Super Bowl commercial fans are saying – good or bad – about their favorite ads. Post-game, the winners and losers are ranked in these categories: top scores (a combination of volume and popularity), most popular, most volume, and least effective.

Enjoy the game and the commercials everybody and please check back throughout the game to see who’s winning Brand Bowl 2012.

But in Las Vegas, Nevada, another primary of sorts will be taking place on January 10. That’s the start of the 2012 International Consumer Electronics Show (CES), when more than 2,700 exhibitors from 140 countries will attract nearly 150,000 attendees to experience more than 20,000 product launches. For the tech companies that participate, CES is the key time to make stump speeches, roll out their 9-9-9 plans and dazzle media, retailers and the public with their amazingly innovative solutions.

Like Vegas itself, CES is a gaudy, inflated, all-you-can eat buffet of delights. Anyone who has attended the tradeshow can attest: it’s exhausting. Not just because walking the enormous space wears out your soles, but because the information overloads your system.

That’s why Mullen banded together with JetBlue Airways and leading social media analytics provider Pointslocal to develop CE Pulse. It’s a real-time, interactive gauge of online public opinion that helps consumers and marketers filter through the overwhelming hype to understand how consumers actually feel about brands and products. CE Pulse tracks and ranks social sentiment so you can see what’s important to the masses. Which brands and products are leading the pack? What gear do I want to blow my paycheck on in 2012?

CE Pulse is the latest in a series of social media monitoring and analysis projects from Mullen. For the past three years, we’ve held BrandBowl to gauge consumer sentiment surrounding Super Bowl TV commercials. Working with Pointslocal, we’ve also measured consumer sentiment related to major sports teams with The Pulse/Boston Red Sox and The Pulse/New England Patriots.

We think that brands that listen to how consumers talk about them are in a better position to engage in a dialogue with those consumers. Social media monitoring tools like CE Pulse enable consumers and brands to truly understand how the public perceives new products and to filter through the noise to uncover valuable information. As the candidates would say, and brands should learn to say, “It’s not about me—it’s about you!”

For a play-by-play report from our own Wolf in the field, follow @CE_Pulse on Twitter and visit the site.

“I’m tremendously excited about Sean coming on board to run digital media and social influence,” said John Moore, Chief Media Officer at Mullen. “His Forrester background makes him a unique asset and embeds in Mullen one of the preeminent thinkers in a space that is keeping CMOs up at night. We look forward to Sean creating a new vision and helping our clients navigate critically important channels like social, mobile and gaming, to name just a few.”

“Integrating different media silos is an imperative for marketers to succeed in the digital era,” said Corcoran. “And to do this at Mullen – with its hyperbundled approach to integrating creative, media, and technology, along with its stellar portfolio of clients such as Google, Zappos, and JetBlue – makes the opportunity even that much more exciting.”

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!

No doubt, you’ve seen the piece. It has a reality show, America’s Most Wanted feel about it. It plays well in day-time television where DRTV is common. There’s a pretty compelling offer ($2.1 million) and a clear call-to-action. The rapid ROI on this sucker was incredible. Broke on a Monday, Whitey gets captured on Wednesday. But, perhaps the most amazing claim of all is that the tip that led to Whitey’s arrest apparently came from Iceland.  For real? Someone in Iceland saw the PSA (most likely through a news report or online) and called in the tip.  Truly amazing testament to the portability of media content in the global digital age. Congrats to the production guy and the PR lady from Maine who put this together for the Feds. Gotta believe business is booming.

Finally, congrats to the strategy team at the FBI. As Dustin told the Herald,

In advertising parlance, they ‘changed the brief,’ and it worked really fast. Instead of going after the scary gangster with the mystique you’re going after this ‘Plain Jane’ dental assistant. She’s harmless, she looks like any woman from Quincy.

1.  Storytelling still rules

Finding, creating and leveraging the relevant things that make a story interesting is still part of the process. It used to be about finding the news hook that would attract an editor. Today, you need to break through an even greater amount of clutter to attract attention. So, you’ve got to know what’s interesting and what should hit the cutting room floor.

2.  Forging relationships with key stakeholders still matters

The platforms have changed, but the relationships matter more than ever. The conversations used to be one-way. Today, it’s much more about two-way communication with the same set of stakeholders than anything wildly different from ten years ago.

3.  Connecting assets with opportunities is still vital to success

We’re still fueling campaigns with creative resources – this is one of the key reasons I’ve enjoyed working at Mullen for more than 12 years. Things are better with creative resources. PR and Social efforts have a greater chance of generating interest if they have an element of magic involved.

4. Setting and reaching goals won’t ever go away

A campaign launch used to include setting goals for what we wanted to get out of it from a publicity standpoint. That part remains, but now we talk about more interesting goals such as readers, fans, followers, engagement and sharing metrics. These quantitative and qualitative factors intrigue me and provide something for which to strive.

5.  Surprising ourselves is still why we keep working

This is a job that should be about pushing ourselves and our clients to innovate and break through the clutter. I don’t see that ever changing.

When you step back from the rush of new people, platforms, places and how they continue to all grow more connected, what can you point to in your line of work that hasn’t changed?

Let’s continue the conversation @ericmontague

His presentation piqued my curiosity, so I decided to follow up on Twitter and try to convince him to do a Skype interview with me. Mind you, Jyri’s no newbie to the Silicon Valley scene. He also founded Jaiku, which was acquired by Google in 2007. I wasn’t sure he’d take the call, but that’s one of the best things about Twitter, you can connect to literally anyone and most people will actually respond to you. This was the case with Jyri.

Below is a summary of the 30 minute conversation we had via Skype and the reasons why marketers need to pay attention to Ditto.

What it is

Ditto is an iphone application (coming soon to android) that allows users to say what they’re about to do and then get feedback from existing friends on Facebook or Twitter or other users in the same location. The inspiration behind Ditto was the insight that “where are you going” is one of the most common expressions communicated through mobile devices. The application aims to coordinate this planning process through the mobile, social and local information incorporated within it. Currently, it is tracking at about 10,000 downloads per week.

Why it’s different

Most LBS apps revolve around the gesture of “checking-in.” The thing about “checking-in” is that it’s about actions taken, what’s already happened, where you are already at. Ditto is creating a new category of services about the “near future” or what you’re about to do in the next 30 minutes to three hours.

Why it will prevail

Ditto will prevail amidst a marketplace of 400,000 applications for three reasons:

• It was designed specifically as a mobile experience. The product was developed as an application, similar to foursquare. It was born as a simple, touch experience that incorporates local (mobile) data. Whereas other social services such as Facebook and Twitter were created primarily as a PC experience, and are more recently integrating location-based services.
• The focus is on the user experience first and there is real benefit to the user. Ditto is building out more platforms and observing consumer behavior before monetizing. They are capturing and providing value at key decision points for consumers. For instance, Jyri talked about a situation where he was thinking about going to the movies to see Source Code. He put that information on Ditto. No sooner than five minutes, one of his Facebook friends responded and mentioned that Source Code was not anywhere near as good as [insert movie B]. Because Jyri knew this friend and respected his taste, he went to see the other movie instead. Through Ditto, Jyri was saved from seeing a movie he likely would not have appreciated.

• The marketing value is clear. Although Ditto’s priority is on the user, it is easy to see how marketing can actually enhance the user experience. Imagine suggesting that you’d like to get a cup of coffee and Starbucks responding to you with a coupon for a store nearby or a free sample of a new latte. For brands, reaching consumers at the decision point is extremely powerful. The user benefit also exists in that they are receiving offers that are relevant to them based on declared real time interests.

What do you say? Ditto?

How do you hire for excellence today in a space that seems to change overnight? As agencies and brands alike continue their mad rush to hire social media savvy talent it can be difficult just to get the right people on both sides of an interview.

To add some clarity to the hiring process, here are five qualities I strongly believe you should look for in a candidate whether they’re entry-level or a manager. You won’t see much discussion as to the number of friends, fans, or followers a candidate should have. This is intentional.

1. Superior Writing

Traditional readers won’t put a book down because of a bad sentence or delete an email because of a typo. The same can’t be said for readers on the social web. If you want your message to be read and inspiring enough to be shared, demand crisp sentences with simple words, bright verbs, and witty turns.

How you assess a candidate’s writing talent is up to you. But if it doesn’t include samples of published web writing, some on-the-spot editing, and a few real-time responses, you’re taking on a big risk.

2. Emotional Intelligence

Given the regularity with which trolls stir up trouble and web-rustic brand managers freak out in response, you should only pursue candidates who can clearly think through the panic around them.

If you’re not good at getting candidates to ramble on about themselves, you can take a quick temperature check by digging into their social media presence. Do they use sarcasm and stir things up in their public-facing commentary? Capture those remarks and ask about them.

3. A Sense of Humor

Apart from being more fun to work with, a candidate with a sense of humor is vital for success on the social web. Make the time to develop a few examples of dry brand messaging and ask the candidate to rework them to be more fun. It’s not foolproof, but this will give you a quick look at how the candidate thinks and what it might be like to work together.

Yes, this will require effort on your part. But getting it out of the way now is a lot easier than spending the next few months telling your poorly-vetted hire to skip the potty jokes in Facebook updates.

4. Content Marketing Savvy

If you want people to see the messages you’re creating, it’s important to have a marketing plan in place that everyone on the team supports. Be wary of candidates who may have content marketing chops but consider themselves “creative writers” such that they’ll balk when asked to write around key phrases or with a certain tone.

If a candidate has succeeded on some level in marketing personal content online, perhaps through an active blog or other writing project, you can safely expect some baseline understanding of how to make a larger presence thrive.

5. An Appetite for Success

The effort needed to successfully launch a social web presence or even just revamp an existing one is mind-blowing to anybody who has never been in the thick of something similar. If a candidate isn’t obsessed with staying in front of the pack and putting in the work to achieve success, you’ll end up with somebody who may do a decent job during the 9–5 hours but who won’t bring anything else to the table.

Find out how the candidate approached workflow on previous projects. Were weekend check-ins a normal part of work? Were hours flexible enough to allow for a few late nights without resentment?

N.B. Make sure whatever salary you offer takes into account the extent of your expectations then demand the best. It’s worth it.

Custom illustration: Mark Dudlik.

According to a recent PopCap study, 83 percent of smartphone respondents said they had played at least one mobile game in the past week. Not only is gaming prevalent on smartphones, but also an AdMob study showed that gaming is the most popular activity on iPads (84 percent of consumers gaming from their devices), topping email and search. Farmville has surpassed 60 million users and Angry Birds is at 30 million free downloads, 12 million paid downloads and Angry Birds stuffed animals are getting four stars on Amazon.com.

What is surprising is that these numbers are not at the top of every marketers’ conversation as there are five simple data points to discuss:

• Gaming is ubiquitous. It has invaded the living room, the basement, the car, and the computer. Xbox has 25 million subscribers, more than Comcast cable. Windows is banking a piece of their mobile strategy on integration with Xbox Live via Windows 7 phones. The next logical screen would be the phone, and smartphone in particular.
• Mobile gives gamers the opportunity to play in their down time and when they are on the go. Because smartphones are portable and always on, consumers use games for entertainment throughout their daily routines – waiting for a bus, sitting on a train, waiting for an appointment, etc.
• Location enhances the gaming experience. Through mobile, gaming has a new dimension. In thinking about TRON or MINI, these games incorporated user locations and their distance from other consumers.
• Touch makes the game more immersive and personal. The smartphone screen is something that a consumer actually touches and influences. For instance, one of the first successful mobile games, Paper Toss, required users to swipe their fingers to shoot a wad of paper into a garbage can.
• Mobile is an inherently social activity. Phones originated as a social tool, used primarily to communicate with friends and family. Many games are also inherently social in that you play against other people. The smartphone is a natural canvas for social, mobile games.

While most of the marketing world has been pontificating, Angela Giovanello, Eric Montague and the Century 21 team has been doing. Working through appssavvy, our team embedded the Century21 brand into ngmoco’s WeCity application for iphone and ipads. We’re excited about the integration because:

• It is providing value. Gamers will now be able to add Century 21 branded structures, including a real estate office, a modern home and a skyscraper to their cities.  Users can also earn virtual profits that empower them to expand their cities and thereby advance within the game.
• In-game branding makes for a more realistic gaming environment. For many gamers, corporate branding within games only serves to make the game feel more realistic and exciting.
• We can connect with a new generation of buyers on their own turf. Instead of trying to reach a younger generation of consumers via just “ads,” we will be able to connect with them through providing game enhancements on a platform they already love.

We’ll judge the campaign through a branding study, interaction rates, and app downloads.  The verdict is still out on how this type of brand campaign will perform, but at the very least, we’ll know we had solid rationale and leveraged an important dynamic to provide real value for consumers.  We also don’t see our marketing efforts as isolated.  Everything we do is an iterative process.  Play.  Learn. Get better.  More marketers need to stop talking and start playing if they want to stay relevant to today’s consumer.

Check out additional campaign information on the Century 21 site: http://blog.century21.com/2011/04/bolder-faster-stronger-and-now-first/.