There is one Zappos TV spot in the market so far. Many more creative pieces to follow. Thanks, as always, to the awesome customer service team at Zappos for the inspiration.

We’ll keep sharing new creative from the campaign as it breaks. There’s more TV, print, online, social and even airport bins to follow. Please have a look at Stuart Elliott’s column in the NY Times if you want to know more about the campaign.

There are many people to acknowledge for their contributions. Please take a look at the full list of credits on Mullen’s YouTube channel. Special thanks to Aaron Duffy (same guy who directed Google’s Parisian Love) and Special Guest for his directorial and their production work.  Special thanks also to puppeteer Randy Carfagno for making the Zappets. Biggest thanks of all to the incredibly nice employees of Zappos who inspired this work.

This work was inspired by the amazingly unique culture and genuinely happy customer service we discovered at Zappos when pitching their business in a wide-open review last summer.

Please check back next week to see the final creative.

One key lesson: don't think audience, think in terms of community of participants

Last night at a special MITX event titled What is the future of advertising agencies? Forrester analyst Sean Corcoran asked a panel of Boston’s advertising leaders what they thought would engender success in the future.

Obviously we like Joe Grimaldi’s answer the best.  “Whoever hires the best talent wins.”

Our second favorite answer came from Larry Weber, serial entrepreneur, digital visionary and currently chairman of the W2 group.  “Brands need to build experiences, not produce campaigns.”

But the real show last night was panel moderator Sean Corcoran’s opening presentation in which he debuted the findings of his thorough research about the fate of ad agencies and the role they will play for brands and marketers in the future.

Sean gave us a brief history of agencies:  ad sales, owners of brand, losers of strategic influence, owners of big idea, splintered specialists — evidence of an ability to adapt constantly over the last 150 years.  But ever since the Internet showed up, agencies (some anyway) have struggled. They continue to think in terms of messages and campaigns rather than experiences. They’ve been slow to master digital technology. They’ve found it hard to move from an assembly line production process to one that’s iterative and adaptive.

So what’s next?  Here’s what Forrester says.  Based on extensive research, interviews with 60 industry leaders (myself included) here are the preliminary findings debuted last night.  In the next couple of weeks Forrester will issue a final report, available to both agencies and marketers.

We not only agree with much of what Sean says, we’re well ahead of the pack on many fronts.  We share, in italics, some of what we’re doing in light of these turbulent times.

It is a new world and clients know it.

• There’s a complexity of media relationships and an attention scarcity (content without walls).
• Despite Edelman’s recent findings, Forrester insists that consumers trust consumers more than brands
• The Groundswell has gone mainstream (consumer is creator/sharer/distributor and there is no going back so deal with it)
• WOM reigns again; your content and the experiences you create must stimulate it
• 3.5 billion brand conversations occur every day:  all in public

Note:  At Mullen, we’re addressing these changes in numerous ways: we developed the Modes of the Mind strategic approach that helps a brand understand its consumer’s relationship to content and community; we’ve built one of the advertising industry’s largest social influence groups; and finally we’ve created our own internal social media lab, which has experimented with projects such as Brandbowl and The Next Great Generation.

Consumers hate most advertising

• Only 5 % agree with advertising claims
• 50 % say brands don’t live up to advertising promises
• 67 % complain there is too much advertising

Adaptive marketing is the new model

• Powered by digital
• Real time response, like politics, is the future of marketing
• All about pull not push
• Addressability is here
• Intelligence and analytics will drive everything.

Note:  We’re in constant pursuit of speed whether it’s to respond or anticipate.  In the last year we’ve have added real time research, increased our social media monitoring capabilities, and developed a disciplined approach to conversation strategy so that we can respond quickly to changes in the marketplace or to community generated content.

There is a new media model

• Paid for scale and reach and speed
• Owned for content, relationships, listening and co-creation
• Earned (social, WOM, PR, bloggers, influencers)

Note:  We love hearing this, since we offer fully autonomous media services with mediaHub; content generation across digital, social, application development and mobile; and full-service PR and social influence.  Believe it or not, on a good day we can actually get them to all work together.

Successful agencies of the future will…

• Build campaigns PLUS platforms, not messages
• Don’t think in terms of audience but rather about a community of participants.
• Integrate in new ways: co-creation, curation, crowdsourcing
• Embrace and master new technologies quickly (iPad anyone?)

Note:  Take a look at what we’re doing for Timberland Pro.  TV, web, experiential, mobile apps but most importantly, all of tied up under a real positioning:  Stay on your feet.

Marketers will look for three things from an agency

• Ideas:  NOTE this does not mean messages or ads
• Interaction:  engagement, connection, community, media
• Intelligence: need to collect, report, analyze and predict

Note:  We have PhD’s from MIT doing our analytics.  We’re building predictive models you can actually take to the bank.

So yes, according the Forrester the future is coming and coming fast.  We say, bring it on.  The sooner the better.

One of the great advantages of being located in the heart of downtown Boston is that when you mistake a glass wall for an open door, it’s only a short term problem. It was 9:20:41 A.M. (note the time code on our main lobby video camera). Creative Director Tim Vaccarino has less than an hour before his Boston flight leaves for New York. He stops at the office to grab some of the presentation, but with his mind elsewhere he neglects to walk through the wide open door to Mullen’s reception area and instead, well, take a look at the video.

But because we’re right in the heart of Boston’s financial and retail district, Tim was actually able to get himself a new wardrobe, literally in minutes, still make his plane, get to New York and help win a new piece of business. The latter will be announced here sometime in the future.

Moral of the story? Mullen employees are unflappable, agile, and blessed with a sense of humor.  True, Tim’s creative direction is better than his sense of direction. But at least he has his priorities right.

Let’s start with Microsoft, already under siege from cloud computing, they are also in imminent danger of becoming irrelevant in the mobile space and have seen their smartphone share slip from 13.1% to 10.7%. Concurrently, Apple has surged to a 25% U.S. share and Android has surged to above 5%. Yes, this was an important venue and announcement for Microsoft as they unveiled their new Windows 7 operating system.  Let’s start with the good news – Microsoft threw out everything they had done in the past and started from scratch. A hard thing to do, but it showed the kind of intrepidness and humility they had historically lacked and was sorely needed. The overall design starts with tiles instead of just offering a plethora of apps; they have variety hubs that are organized in themes like “people hubs” and “game hubs.” The former will organize your pictures and email from friends and the latter will organize your games and connect to Xbox live. The other element that was really smart is that they have finally recognized that Zune is a much more valuable asset as part of their smartphone software vs. a standalone unit. So yes, I am giving Microsoft a big thumbs up on Windows 7 and I believe they have finally gotten it right. The question everybody is pondering is if it’s too late? More good news for Microsoft, most mobile pundits believe the smartphone market is still sorting itself out and they still have a chance to be a player. The software will be on a surfeit of phones including HP, Dell and HTC, and the software should roll out around holiday 2010.

The other big news was made by Nokia, still the world leader in phones, but which has slipped badly over the past 24 months amid steadily negative PR. Nokia and Intel teamed up to announce “MeeGo.” The goal of MeeGo is to create an entity that will go beyond smartphones and expand to cars, home phones and computers. Intel also has a lot riding on this new partnership as, although they dominate PCs along with Microsoft (sometimes referred to as Wintel), they have not made a dent in smartphones. Both companies hope this new entity will attract the developer community.

So there you have it – for once Apple and Google’s Android (or RIM) did not suck up all the oxygen from a mobile event. No this time it was two well known companies fighting for survival in the growing and all important smartphone wars.

With that said, how are marketers able to keep up with the accountability that digital consumption offers? Nielsen is answering this question in a couple of ways, yet are these solutions really an answer? NNR just rolled out Video Census, a tracking tool that will tell us how much time is spent with typical TV programming online in addition to other key metrics such as completion rates and market share of programming. Additionally, they are rolling out “Extended Screen” Measurement in Nielsen’s National People Meter Panel. Television programs presented online with the same commercial content as on TV can have online viewing integrated into the TV Ratings Currency.

The main barrier I see with these tools is that typically, and more often as technology advances, online buyers purchase an audience, rather than specific TV shows or even publishers. We can reach the right demo no matter what they are viewing or doing. To buy specific content requires the highest CPM’s on the Web so the argument will fall flat with clients used to prime or cable CPM’s. So, instead of making online like TV, we need to educate our clients steeped in TV about the guaranteed demographic impressions and deep analytics you can derive from digital rather than telling them their TRP’s just jumped from incremental digital exposure.

This, of course, is the situation today. But, the possibilities are endless on how this will all evolve and whether or not TV can dictate a new way of buying online and drive down specific programming rates.

The rankings below were captured during the period of 6:00 – 11:00 PM eastern time on Super Sunday (that was game time). The methodology we used to calculate the rankings is explained on the BrandBowl site. The rankings reflect both volume of chatter and relative sentiment (positive/negative) and are based on nearly 100,000 tweets captured from 66,000 Twitter accounts. We have analytical dashboard data for all the Super Bowl brands if any of you brand managers would like to see?

Here are the final BrandBowl standings 1-42 and above is a Hulu widget if you’d like to view the Super Bowl spots :

1. Doritos
2. Google
3. Focus on the Family
4. Snickers
5. Budweiser
6. Bud Light
7. Hyundai
8. Kia
9. GoDaddy
10. Coca-Cola
11. U.S. Census Bureau
12. E-Trade
13. Dockers
14. Audi
15. Vizio
16. Dodge
17. Dove
18. VW
19. Monster
20. McDonald’s
21. Intel
22. Denny’s
23. Boost
24. CareerBuilder
25. Bridgestone
26. TacoBell
27. TruTV
28. HomeAway
29. EA
30. Walt Disney
31. Dr. Pepper
32. KGB
33. Universal
34. Paramount
35. FloTV
36. Cars.com
37. Motorola
38. Diamond Foods – Pop Secret
39. Honda
40. Teleflora
41. Michelob Ultra
42. Budweiser Select55

Doritos - "Keep your hands off my Mama!"

Doritos, Google and Focus on the Family.

They were the three brands left standing on the podium at the conclusion of BrandBowl2010. Why you ask? Isn’t it obvious, I say? Simplicity. Buzz. And dialogue.

Of course, we all know pulling off effective campaigns is a lot harder than it looks. It’s much easier to be an armchair quarterback, to write blog posts about how successful brands follow simple marketing rules, and then state those rules for all to see.

Boy, this armchair sure is comfy.

1) Production dollars don’t help you stand out at the Super Bowl.

In fact, they might help you blend in.

How do you squeeze your message through the spectacle that is the Super Bowl? How do you break through all of the hype, through the blaring graphics, the laser shows, the celebrities, the boatloads of slickly produced, over-the-top spots?

You chill out.

Google reused their elegant “Parisian Love” spot from their Search Stories campaign. It was nothing more than a simple screencast of an enthralling dialogue-free story. You (yes, you!) can purchase a license for Snapz Pro for $69, get yourself some royalty-free music and in an hour produce something similar yourself. Gene Simmons—and his midget—can eat their hearts out.

2) Pre-game buzz is worth more than any thirty-second spot.

Set against a white seamless backdrop, Focus on the Family had Pam Tebow talk about her difficult pregnancy. Then her son, 2007 Heisman Trophy winning Tim Tebow, tackles her to the ground. Goofy smiles and heart-warming feelings ensue. Not a particularly memorable spot in and of itself.

But Focus on the Family got their $2.6-million-dollar-buy worth before Drew Brees brushed his teeth Sunday morning. According to the BrandBowl, Focus on Family was far and away the most tweeted about brand among Super Bowl advertisers in the days leading up to the big game. That the actual spot turned out to be something of a non-event didn’t matter.

3) Mix the first two rules, add a dash of dialogue with your consumers, and you’ll win the BrandBowl!

Doritos’ “Crash the Super Bowl” campaign continued the brilliant crowdsourcing effort they’ve been running for three years now. It eschews top production values, in favor of building buzz and a community of avid followers in the months (and years, really) leading up to the game. It lets the people take control of the brand. The result is hilarious, simple, stand-out spots that get tweeted about in droves, make Doritos feel like a contemporary brand and makes them winners of the Brand Bowl.

Acknowledgment: this article was written with contributions from Andy Schneider.

BrandBowl2010 Winners

According to the 63,000+ Twitter users whose comments were captured in BrandBowl2010, Doritos was the most effective brand to advertise on the Super Bowl telecast on CBS this year. Budweiser Select55 was the least effective brand.

Mullen, and Radian6, a leader in social media measurement, created BrandBowl2010, a Twitter/Super Bowl experience that combined tweeting, ad reviews and a host of metrics to let viewers generate and view real time ratings of the TV commercials that ran on the big game.

The results were determined from a total of 98,656 Tweets collected at BrandBowl2010. The site provided an overall ranking of the brands advertising on the game based on a composite score that takes into consideration both volume of tweets and sentiment (positive or negative).

TOP SCORERS
When all was said and done, the top three brands were Doritos, Google and Focus on the Family. Doritos won the title by virtue of dominating the sheer volume of tweets. That was enough to keep them ahead of Google, which had a higher percentage of positive tweets.

MOST POPULAR
The most popular brands at the BrandBowl were McDonald’s and Dr. Pepper. Interestingly, neither of these brands had the sheer number of tweets to break into BrandBowl’s top ten—but the tweets about these brands were overwhelmingly positive.

MOST VOLUME
Again, the top three brands were Doritos, Google and Focus on the Family. These brands gapped the rest of the field in terms of volume of tweets, which dropped off sharply after the top three.

Free creative for Budweiser Select55

Mullen is offering Budweiser Select55, the last place finisher in BrandBowl2010, free creative services to make a better Super Bowl commercial next year. Mullen has produced four Super Bowl commercials in the past, including the Monster.com spot When I Grow Up, which many ad critics consider among the best Super Bowl spots of all time.

“Clearly no one wants to come in last place,” said Edward Boches, chief creative officer at Mullen. “So to ease the pain, we’ve made a commitment to recommend, for free, to the losing brand, creative ideas for next year. Perhaps we’ll even crowdsource those ideas, asking the entire social media community to join us in offering up free recommendations.”

The Top Ten Most Effective Brands on BrandBowl2010

1. Doritos
2. Google
3. Focus On Family
4. Snickers:
5. Budweiser
6. Bud Light
7. Hyundai
8. Kia
9. GoDaddy
10. Coca-Cola

The Five Least Effective Brands on BrandBowl2010

1. Budweiser Select55
2. Michelob Ultra
3. Teleflora
4. Honda
5. Diamond Foods’ – Pop Secret

The success of Brandbowl is due not only to all the people at Mullen and Radian6 who built it, but to many people in the social media community who helped promote it: @bbhlabs, @bigspaceship, @rga, @erproulx, @benkunz, @schwartzie14, @stevehall,  @kenwheaton, @lvanderpool and dozens of others.  That alone is a reminder of the worth of having a social network and a community.