It’s that time of year again. The online Superbowl party that Mullen started three years ago to celebrate the age of Twitter is well into development. If you remember, we began our annual project when there weren’t very many ad types on Twitter. In 2009, most of the industry was still like “huh?”

A few of us at Mullen, the kind folks at Radian 6, and some friends like Sally Hogshead and Lisa Hickey made the effort to get ad land excited. We launched what was then called Trash Talk from the Twitter Section, shared instructions for how to sign up for Twitter, and encouraged people to open accounts. Today it’s hard to imagine that Twitter needed an introduction as recently as three years ago.

Now here we are for our fourth anniversary and we’re excited to introduce some new features. For starters, we’ve made the site, brandbowl2012.com, more interactive. (Note that at this posting it re-directs to last year’s site.) For the first time, users will be able to compare brands head to head in a statistical showdown. Whose ads are getting more attention or more favorable reaction? Brandbowl knows.

We’ve isolated a box at the top of the page, held high by a digital fan, to feature the best tweets of the game. Post something particularly insightful or clever and you could find your tweet featured atop the stream for everyone to see.

Brandbowl 2012 also has some new data to share. This year’s analytics will track the geo location of tweets and also the gender of the participant. Might be interesting to see comparisons between the sexes when it comes to talking about Superbowl ads.

The mobile experience will be better, too. Let’s face it, there’s likely to be more people watching the game with a smartphone in hand than a laptop resting on their knees. You’ll be able to check live rankings and post instantly from your iPhone or Android. Given that it’s a site, not an app, it will work everywhere.

And finally, we’ve been approached by Billboard, which wants to get in on the action. So we’ve offered them the featured tweet board for the half-time show. Madonna better watch out. Billboard knows what it’s talking about when it comes to reviewing music and performances.

Once again, our partner Radian 6 is back with its sentiment data and analytics. And for the second year in a row Boston.com is hosting the site and helping to promote it.  Given that Twitter’s active user base continues to grow and that social media advertising couch critics is an expanding population, we expect to get some pretty good data.

Hope to see you there. On brandbowl2012.com. Using the easy to remember hashtag #brandbowl. I know who I’m rooting for. The creative.

If you need a reminder or are interested in what this is all about, here’s a video recap of last year’s effort.

This production is unlike anything I have done before. In my career, I have placed billions of dollars’ worth of ads for clients and felt little more than the satisfaction of keeping a budget straight; but here, today, we are running radio spots, print ads, banners and straight-up walking into businesses and handing people a website URL that will actually help them — no BS or misdirected strategic frameworks or anything like that. Google is here to help, period. What we are doing is good for them, and if enough people around the country hear about it, it’s good for Google and “Howtogomo.com.” Yeah, it’s marketing and whatever, but we are actually going to help real people and real businesses up close in a place that needs a bit of a pat on the back. So I am not ashamed to admit it: It feels good to work in advertising today. Plus the people in Mobile are so thankful and happy.

So, let’s go! Mobilize Mobile!

GoMo is an initiative that aims to help businesses build mobile-friendly websites. And, in an era when three mobile devices are activated for every baby born on earth, GoMo couldn’t be timelier.

Consider these facts:

• Web searches from mobile devices have increased 400% in the last two years.
• Soon, more people will access the web from a mobile device than desktop computers.
• Businesses can increase consumer engagement up to 85% with a mobile-optimized website.

But in spite of these compelling statistics, only 36% of American businesses have mobile friendly sites. Everyone else is missing out on a huge opportunity to reach customers in a new and very personal way.

As advertising professionals, this is exactly the kind of opportunity we should be encouraging our clients to jump on. A campaign without mobile strategy is really just not a complete campaign anymore. This is as rich and as crucial a field to be playing in as the internet itself was 15 years ago, and the time to do it is now.

And that’s where GoMo comes in. Visit the case study section of GoMo to learn more about how consumers use mobile and understand best practices for mobile sites. You can even run your site — or your client’s site — through the GoMoMeter for a personalized report on how to get mobile-friendly.  Get smart about mobile, and get ready for a revolution in digital creative.

Mullen’s response: Kids Take Charge℠.

Launched this week, Kids Take Charge℠ seeks to educate consumers through a series of humorous videos starring kids. Nobody wants to talk about the life insurance process, but the program lightens the tone of the conversation and adds a sense of humor to an important but oftentimes uncomfortable topic.

Housed on the Mass Mutual Facebook page, the videos are a direct and emotional reminder of who life insurance actually protects…the kids. Mixing comical interactions and factual statistics, Kids Take Charge℠ is the industry’s first of its kind. The segments include scenes in which kids attempt to buy plans for their parents, evaluate an agent and quiz adults about the topic. By educating consumers, the program will better prepare adults to make key financial decisions that affect them and their families.

Through the use of social media, MassMutual hopes to spark the conversation around the importance, benefits and necessity of life insurance for adults.

Why life insurance? MassMutual and Mullen encourage you to find out.

The Situation

Millions of children across Somalia and the Horn of Africa are suffering a deadly combination of drought, escalating food prices and armed conflict.

The famine in Somalia is swift and dreadful. More than half of the population—4 million people—is in crisis. In the six famine districts, the number of people affected has doubled since July. Without urgent assistance, more than 160,000 children in southern Somalia will die in the coming weeks.

For more information on the famine and UNICEF’s work in the region, please visit this site.

A New Kind of Response to a Big International Disaster: 50/50

Mullen has joined an ad-hoc network of contributors spearheaded by Made by Many, called 50/50.  50/50 is a kind of digital folk movement that’s convened to try and do something actively to help the people of East Africa.

In a nutshell, 50/50 is a fairly insane experiment to create a platform of 50 digital projects in 50 days to raise £1m for famine relief in East Africa.

You will see projects by some of the world’s biggest ad agencies—JWT, BBH, Leo Burnett, SapientNitro, Mullen, Fallon, CHI, Arnold, Butler Shine—as well as from some amazing individual makers and people who just want to do something.  Most of these agencies actually compete with each other in day-to-day life, but have come together for this cause.  What’s even more remarkable is that we are all doing this in our spare time—evenings and weekends.

This marks a new kind of response to a big international disaster and highlights a new type of behavior. 50/50 is definitely part of a much broader trend towards active, experiential fundraising that is embedded in social networks and the living web.

Mullen’s 50/50 idea: the Good Belly Project

Americans love food—we watch it on TV, we go out of our way for it, we bond over it, and now, we even photograph it to share with our friends in social media.  In a nation of abundance, how can we use this juxtaposition of feast and famine to build awareness to our cause? Mullen has decided to turn the trend of taking “glamour food shots” into the very vehicle that will help feed famine victims in East Africa, and we’ve called it the Good Belly Project.

It’s easy: use Instagram and hashtag #goodbellyproject when you go to participating restaurants

Foodies love food so much they take photos of their meals to share with friends on social media.  So Mullen partnered with Boston restaurants to mobilize these foodies for our cause.  We’re asking foodies to use a popular photo-sharing iPhone app called Instagram to photograph the food or drink they order at participating Good Belly establishments.  For every photograph taken and tagged with both our hashtag (#goodbellyproject) and restaurant location, the restaurant donates $1 to the cause.

Mullen wanted to make this charity fun for Boston foodies, so we’ve centered it on enjoying what you already love to do rather than depriving yourself like other charities ask you to do.

The Good Belly Project kicked-off on World Food Day, Sunday, October 16, 2011.

So go ahead, eat, take pictures and help fill the bellies of children in East Africa.

Got it for the Ground Rules videos that kicked off the JetBlue You Above All campaign last fall. Hopefully you’ve seen them online, but we recently turned them into TV :30′s that are playing in big markets where JetBlue flies. They’re embedded below for your entertainment pleasure.

“When we launched the “Ground Rules” campaign and “You Above All” we asked our partners at JetBlue to come to the edit bay in NYC and sit with us to view the rough cuts together,” said Mullen CCO Mark Wenneker. “Feeling a bit nostalgic, I recorded their reaction on my iPhone. There was dead silence followed by a booming uncontrollable Santa Claus laugh from our client Marty St. George and a huge proud smile from our client Fiona Morrisson. This set the tone for the campaign and the relationship we have with this amazingly genuine, fun and determined group of people. It’s honor enough to have JetBlue as a client. This award is just icing on the cake.”

800 attendees gathered for Hatch tonight. From over 1,000 submissions in over 74 categories, 358 Gold, Silver and Bronze awards were presented to ad agencies, in-house creative shops, and students. Every major Fortune 500 brand handled by a New England agency was represented, including Jet Blue, Liberty Mutual, Major League Baseball, Staples, Dunkin’ Donuts, Timberland and Barnes & Noble, to name a selection.

In addition to Best of Show, Mullen won a total of 56 Hatch Bowls, including Golds for JetBlue and Planet Fitness for the spots below.

Congratulations to all the winners and thanks to the judges from Crispin Porter + Bogusky, TBWA\Chiat\Day, Wong Doody Crandall Wiener and Fallon.

This Twitter-driven site scores how the Red Sox team and players are faring in terms of positive or negative comments made locally in Boston and across the country. What do you think, maybe leaning a little negative today? The Pulse provides up-to-the-minute rankings and graphs them over time, so fans can see how opinions change from day to day and game to game, although there won’t be any more of those until April. Ugh!

Mullen collaborated with Boston.com and PointsLocal, a pioneer in the emergent field of extracting geosocial business intelligence, to build The Pulse. The single-page feature combines fan participation, social media analytics, Boston.com sports coverage, blog posts, even Instagram photos. It lets readers share tweets, post images, follow conversations and see what other fans are saying – good or bad — about their favorite players.  The Pulse/Boston Red Sox analyzes social media conversation by player, by game, even by state by taking advantage of PointsLocal’s natural language processing and ability to geo-code locations, topics and sentiments.

The platform also offers a sponsoring advertiser the chance to interact with the community in real time and even create advertising using Instagram.

Up next, a New England Patriots version and maybe one for the Presidential campaign in 2012.

It’s a Beta thing for now, but please check it out, use the hashtag #pulseredsox and join the “fellowship of the miserable” as we wallow in the sorrow of the greatest meltdown in MLB history.

Dave Weist and Tim Vaccarino

You know the old Leo Durocher thing about nice guys finishing last? Not true. Witness Dave Weist and Tim Vaccarino, two good guys who just got bumped up to Executive Creative Directors in Mullen’s Boston headquarters. For those of you who don’t know them personally, I suspect you’ll recognize their work. They helped Mullen win the JetBlue and Barnes & Noble/NOOK accounts and have been the creative leaders on the You Above All  and Read Forever campaigns for those two brands. If you’re a U.S. Armed Services member, you may have also seen their Super Bowl spot for the Federal Voting Assistance Program.

Dave and Tim came to us by way of Modernista! and Arnold, where they created a lot of famous work for Cadillac, Hummer and VW.  They have won all the big stuff – Cannes Grand Prix, One Show, Andy’s, Art Directors Club, CA, Clio’s, Grand MPA Kelly Awards, D&AD, AICP and multiple Effies.

“With Tim and Dave, it’s always been about making Mullen better, not making themselves better,” said Mark Wenneker, Chief Creative Officer. “They’ve won accounts, won awards and won the hearts and the respect of all of us. Good things come to good people, but great things only come to a few. And it only seems right to recognize their contributions in a huge way at this point.”

Congrats to these good guys and look forward to seeing their next act of creative wizardry.