And to be honest. It was very disappointing. For 50 % of the ads, I wished that they have found a less expensive commercial break to show their ad – and instead use a bit (or a lot) more on both creative development and production value. Yes, it is true that most of the Super Bowl viewers are already drunk and skewed to the male side of the population, but you need to be really drunk to see through production value this low.

On the creative side, the ads where ranging from really lame to okay. Only few stood out. Back to those later. On the lame side, it was horrifying to see how the creative fell into the feared creative “save zone” of funny dogs, cute babies, sexy women (and men – thank you H&M) and the lowest common denominator for human emotions. It is cheap tricks and will not score high on any creative hit list, even though a few of the ads where quite funny. But funny “haha”, not at the least “aha”.

But besides creative save zones and low production value, there was a lack of conceptual framing for the ads. If any focus group should elaborate on the greater meaning of the content or the intention of the commercials, most of the ads would met a simple “I think they want to sell stuff”-answer. This is really sad. The biggest advertising scene in the world is used merely to short term goals. Where is the ambitions and the big, big ideas?

Yes, many of the advertiser could argue that there is elements of long term branding in just the context and even in the content. But really? Would really have liked seeing the pitches (or the briefings) for these. Please seeks back to the virtues of classic television ads. Make us feel something. Real entertainment is not only about the laugh (or the attempt to make us laugh). It is about feelings. And about having a story to tell. Something so valuable that I want to talk about it afterwards. Only few of the ads this year deserves this.

But besides this, it is not all bad.

Personally, I get really touched by the Chrysler Ads. The campaign launch last year with star rapper Eminem. The concept is “Imported from Detroit” highlighting the true american dreams of struggling, fighting and learning to rise after a fall. It is very patriotic and one could say, too much. But it works and in the depth of the crisis it talks to the american soul of hard work and success.  Olivier Francois, president and CEO, Chrysler Brand, Chrysler Group LLC says, “The new tagline was created to convey the message that one does not have to cross an ocean to obtain luxury, its available right here”. (Due to the merger with Fiat, this message is important to the Chrysler brand, ensuring the customers that they are still true american)

This is something more of selling products. It is selling hope, dreams and the spirit of america. And besides that, great work with the context of the ad in the halftime.

And here’s a few other favorites.

Honda CR-V. Just because I love (all) the Ferris Buller-references. With 57 views on the old videotape, we actually get them.

Kia Optima. Great concept of what would happen if the sandman actually drop the whole bag of dream powder. Great idea. And I like the shot where he rides the Rhino.

McDonalds. Touching. A bit too much. But it works.

M&M. Because you actually want to see it again. And again.

Here’s the short summary on key tasks in the new Consumer Decision Journey.

1. Align – Marketing organizations will need to align their resources with “where consumers spend their time.” The “evaluate” and “advocate” stages will likely become more significant to consumers than the “consider” and “buy” stages, and marketers will have to respond accordingly. Edelman suggests this could result in shifting media dollars from traditional paid media to customer-created channels.
2. Link – Marketers will face the considerable challenge of ensuring that every message about a product or service is consistent across every channel. With so many different online and offline outlets, maintaining that consistency will be harder than ever.
3. Lock – Marketers must “lock in” a customer’s attention by providing direct, opt-in channels, such as email promotions, Facebook and Twitter feeds, and apps that truly benefit the customer. This means allocating resources to media that engages the customer at every stage of their journey.
4. Loop – The journey is a loop — so marketers must accommodate that process with a continuous loop that mines data, uses it to create valuable, relevant content, and then analyzes the response to the content. Edelman uses Amazon as a classic example: The company provides the ability for customers to rate products and then shares the information with customers; it then analyzes that information and uses it to create personalized recommendations.

(With thanks to Barry Silverstein)

Captive Media has based this on an insight into how difficult is is for brands to gain the young males attention while out socializing. Now they can use their average of 55 seconds of waste time at the urinal to actually engage in branded entertainment.

Will be fun to see if this is a quirky one-hit-wonder or will be a new way of engagement.

Four years after it seems as the discussion is almost the same. Cookies are being discussed as never before. I am now more clear on my stand in this matter. I need to redefine trust. Getting access to knowledge on my web behavior isn’t that risky. I trust the content providers to actually use it for shared benefits. I will get a better web experience. They will be able to select ads and content relevant to me.

This morning I stumbled upon the discussion again in The Economist, where Google had 3 ads on the subject. Not typical ads, but ads to address the discussions going on right now.

The nice Erin wrote a post on creating fansumers where she started a discussion on this issue, linking back to Interactive marketing trends. I’m not totally settled on my attitude towards behavioral targeting, but it is difficult. I love the thought of having the choice to share personal info in exchange for less, but more targeted ads, but I hate services sneaking it into the apps not notifing the users. But the dilemma is; does the users understand this profoundly enough to be able to choose. And are there consequences? Anyway it is a good discussion which I think we will be talking a lot about in the years to come…

I’m a bit puzzled here because I see why this kind of behavioral targeting scares people with it’s big brother feel, but on the other hand, doesn’t it do the media consumers a favor, by being able to address them with relevant ads instead of a wide range of irritating stuff. And if we as marketers can raise ROI by being relevant, perhaps we can actually stop spamming people so much. Let face it – the ads don’t disappear! This could actually be a way to make them relevant and thereby more acceptable – as we see in magazine ads… Had the same discussion going when Joost launched. If you could make the commercial break 60 secs instead of 6 minutes by giving info on you life, who wouldn’t prefer that?

While most Danish youth still primarily use their mobilephone for texting and calling (yes, that is how it is) South Korean youths are making the mobilephone an extension of their existence. Besides Internet, mobile TV, m-commerce, m-banking and m-movies, other and more sophisticated mobile services were introduced. For instance the Polygraph which is a mobile lie detector allowing South Korean girls to test if their boyfriends are telling them the truth about their where-abouts etc. Very effective – but also a bit scary! Another interesting mobile service, that the seminar introduced, was the so-called Navi Call Taxi Service. This service is an sms-gps taxi service that evolves around making the taxi experience more safe for young women by i.e. sending a text message to the parents and/or friends with the name and number of the taxi and its location.

It is a common fact that South Korea as a highly developed market when it comes to mobile communication. However, it could have been interesting to know, how many of the South Korean youth actually use these advanced mobile services. The interesting part was, that the mobile services discussed by Cheil were primarily targeted young females, and that these served as drivers of the services making them a natural part of their daily lives and social connections. This could definetely be a source of inspiration for Danish mobile companies in their never-ending quest for the young target group.

The game is over, and is closed down. On the website it is regarded as a huge succes, thanking millions of people for participating. Hosted by McDonald and the Olympic Comittee it ought to have the right powers to push it towards a tipping point.

So why so quiet in DK? Or did I just miss it while spending the summer driving through europe…

Here is the website showing the case study of the lost ring campaign

Took three very different books with me to London and all though the Paul Arden “God explained in a taxi ride” and Advertising Age’s “Madison and Vine” were some easy reads, I especially enjoyed the last (but also more demanding, so better for hotel room than for airplane) “Everything Bad is Good for You” by Steven Johnson.

While parents often tend to judge the unfamiliar habits of the next generation, this book challenge (among a lot of other interesting subjects) the tendency to dumb down the emerging gaming culture. While gaming is evolving from being perceived as a child activity to an emerging cross demographic activity, stealing time from TV, reading and other media consumption, this is an important discussion.

Johnson starts with the much used (but even more current than ever) McLuhan quote “The student of media soon comes to expect the new media of any period whatever to be classed as psedo by those who acquired the patterns of earlier media, whatever they may happen to be”

This clearly defines the ongoing discussions on the gaming culture, with the tendency to evaluate the gains from spending time on games with the gains from reading linear text.

I will recommend all with an interest in this, to read the book, but here’s the main conclusions.

Reading is teaching the child some elementary skills on imagination, interpretation and concentration based on the premises of following a plot. Gaming on the other hand is teaching the involved to lead a plot and make decisions.

This is just as important skills for the engaged participant.

Even though the decision making process for outsiders will seem as a basic pushing of buttons, the major key to making the way through most games, is based on the ability to figure out what the right thing to do is.

This decision making skill set is basically developed around two techniques; probing and telescoping. Probing is learning the concept of inductive reasoning with trial and error as driver for the progression in the storyline of the game. Telescoping is defined as the ability to act on complex task solving with the final goal embedded in an impressive amount of layers of tasks, each interdependent.

So even though killing the Dwarf in WoW or leading Marcus safely through GoW isn’t important to get through life, the skills of learning how to take decisions and lead a proces, must be recognized as some of the most important human skills.

Johnson compares the lack of this level in the discussion with the concept of teaching kids algebra. It is more likely than not, that the kids will never use this skill after graduating. The reason for teaching algebra (and a lot of other things) is to learn how to think. The same as when people playing computer games learn how to take decisions.

Instead of learning how to follow a narrative thread, the gamers learn to solve tasks and lead the plot.

This is just one of the insights on gaming. Johnson also discusses why games are so addictive, taking the much hyped  (these days too hyped) discussion on neuroscience into the discussion and challenges the common understanding of the next generations love of instant gratification to court, by pointing out the attraction in games exactly based on the opposite concept of delayed gratification, activating our basic reward system sending dopamine into the body when solving a challenging task.

So games do not dumb us down. The activates the brain in a new way, they teach us to take decisions and navigate through complex situations. And I’ll end this with a quote from John Dewey’s book “Experience and Education”.

“Perhaps the greatest of all pedagogical fallacies is the notion that a person learns only that particular thing he is studying at the time. Collateral learning in the way of formation of enduring attitudes, of likes and dislikes, may be and often is much more important than the spelling lesson or lesson in geography or history that is learned. For these attitudes are fundamentally what count in the future.”

I don’t think the world needs another planning blog. But I need it.

On the 28th of august 2006 I started blogging for the first time on “In search of media innovation”, and shortly after continued on “Channel 8000 – unleash curiosity planning” which where alive and kicking until the summer of 2010, where I ended up having other priorities. I wrote a book, got married, moved to Copenhagen and got a new job. So little time left to actually keep up the blogging. And as unique and rare the blogging activity seemed back in 2006 – as mainstream it was in 2010. So when the sharing aspect of the activity was down to a minimum, I lacked the sense of urgency and I left the scene.

Then why the f%€#ck relaunch a new blog?

Sometimes you don’t know the true value of stuff before you lost it. I thought I blogged to share – but know now that the true effect was reflection and to remember interesting thing I find on my way. I’ve seen through the last year that my brain really misses writing – not really to share, but to have a reason to prioritize reflection and log the cool things I stumble upon.

So I blog to reflect and remember. Not so much to please and share. But if anyone finds it interesting and wants to discuss, challenge or comment, it will be my pleasure.