10 TIPS TO MAKE YOUR CONTENT GO VIRAL

© Focal Press; lllustration from Transmedia Marketing

By Anne Zeiser
Founder of Azure Media 
Author of Transmedia Marketing: From Film and TV to Games and Digital Media

Shared content on social media is the fastest growing and perhaps most influential media force today. It broke the story of the Navy SEAL’s raid on Osama bin Laden, advanced marriage equality, reenergized Star Trek-er George Takei’s career, and launched the selfie. It’s truly the global virtual water cooler. And it rarely operates in a vacuum. As the connective tissue to your film or other traditional and digital media, shared content both markets the story and is the story.

So, increasing your content’s shareability is a top goal. Shared content is an inexpensive means of distribution and promotion that spreads the word and assets for your media project. It’s also a ringing endorsement of it. In a world where friends and family’s approval means as much as critics’, audiences are likely to check out the content that others in their tribe deem share-worthy. And, with easy access to social media on second screens and on the go, sharing is more prevalent than ever. When your fans use, love, and tell others about your media project and its content, that’s a smash hit for you.

As a 21^st century media maker and media marketer, you’re already halfway there. You offer huge value to your target audiences simply through the deep bench of assets from your content creation and curation. You have an abundance of content through your film or media project and its marketing. You have considerable expertise and insight into the context and relevancy of your story and its associated genres or themes. You have an array of online distribution platforms – from Web sites and social media to blogs and online video. And you have an entrenched understanding of your niche audiences, knowing who they are, where they go, and what motivates them. For that segment of the audience, you can be the hero.

Is there a secret sauce to making a media or entertainment property’s content go viral? No, but these 10 key tips and their entertainment mini-case studies can help you  maximize the impact of your content so that your key audiences will participate with it and share it.

TIP #1) Integrate Your Film and Its Marketing Into a Single Narrative

Tweets or shared online video teasers, once seen as marketing tools for a bigger product, are media products unto themselves. Today, in any form, media content can both advance the storyline and market the story. From the beginning, approach your film or media project and marketing from a holistic content creation perspective. Don't differentiate between story and marketing. Step back and think of yourself as serving a passionate defined, niche audience by creating, curating, and distributing content. So all of your content – whether “owned” (assets you create such as the film and digital platforms), “paid” (ads and product placement), or “earned” (publicity and social engagement) – are installments in an overall audience experience. As such, your film and its poster, teaser trailer, Facebook page, Web site, ads, actors’ tweets, and special events are all part of its overall narrative, which collectively can enchant your audiences.

Anchorman 2 – Ubiquitous Ron Burgundy

KXMB-TV/YouTube

Ron Burgundy co-hosts a North Dakota station newscast in character.

Paramount Picture’s campaign for Anchorman 2: The Legend Continues made Ron Burgundy, the 1970s throwback news anchor, ubiquitous. He was in Buick ads extolling the virtues of glove compartments; on Conan remarking how babies have gotten uglier; on a huge billboard near Penn Station with a 3-D moustache; and on KXMB-TV in South Dakota co-anchoring a live newscast. Each sighting delighted social audiences, fueling speculation about where he’d show up next.

Burgundy also posted about real-world events, like the UK royal baby. Paramount created shareable Burgundy-inspired games and original videos tagged with Burgundy’s tagline, #StayClassy. Because of Will Ferrell’s genius at making the character hilarious in any context, Ron Burgundy went viral.

TIP #2) Think Transmedia

By its very definition, an integrated storytelling approach embraces multiple media platforms. Transmedia simply means storytelling across several media platforms, with each element making distinctive contributions to the audience’s understanding of the narrative or story universe.  Using many platforms isn’t new. Leonardo da Vinci was a true fifteenth-century polymath – thinking, creating, and expressing across every conceivable platform of his era. Today’s modern transmedia is about creating immersive storyworlds and engaging audience experiences using various media – film, TV, radio, books, publications, games, online, mobile, music, events, live installations, toys, and more. Being transmedia offers huge benefits. It boosts the chances of your audiences intersecting with your media property on some platforms, thereby cutting through the morass of available content. And providing integrated content on several platforms provides deep participatory experiences that translate into your audiences’ active engagement with your content.

Despicable Me 2 – On air, Online, On the Go…and Even In the Air

"Despicable Me 2 Blimp” by Gavin St. Ours/CC BY 2.0 

Universal’s Despicable Me 2 Despicablimp over California.

Despicable Me 2, the animated film sequel about the evil Gru and his little yellow henchmen, premiered in the U.S. in July of 2013. Six months before, the 165 X 55 foot Minion Despicablimp introduced U.S. audiences’ to the film. It crossed the country three times, appearing at key events – its journey trackable via the film’s Web site. And the appeal of the Minions didn’t end in theaters. As part of the sequel’s release, a free mobile Despicable Me role-playing game launched – downloaded more than 100 million times in its first three months.

Several children’s books released and Despicable Me universe-inspired virtual items were available in the catalogue for the massively popular multi-player online game (MMOG), Roblox. Around the sequel’s release, downloads of the original movie, Despicable Me and existing Minion Madness mini-movies on iTunes, Amazon, and Google Play topped the charts. Universal’s Despicable Me 2 sequel grossed more than $360 million in domestic and almost $1 billion in foreign box office sales.

TIP # 3)   Offer Value

When your content and its context offer value, your audiences are motivated to explore further or take action – click, view, or share. That’s why so many people vote on American Idol’s winner or create parody videos. With enough value-driven exchanges, audiences choose to become part of your project’s community and story as co-creators, co-marketers, and even as characters. To offer value to your audiences, give them something they didn’t have before – information, insight, or perspective. They want timely, ongoing content and information about your project’s storyworld and production universe. This content is an immediate reward. Through your content, keep the story moving and fresh. Add context and social relevancy. Link your narrative to other important or aligned content. Play generously with other content makers and audiences. Exchange ideas, cross-promote, and give credit to others.

PBS’s Idea Channel and Everything But The News – Feed My Curiosity

                        PBS’s Idea Channel/YouTube

                         Mike Rugnetta’s weekly posts about quirky, 
yet engrossing subjects has garnered 52 million views.

PBS’s brand is known for delivering value through quality information and content, much of it long-form. To reach new audiences, PBS created YouTube vlogs and Webisodes that have taken off. Every Wednesday Mike Rugnetta posts new videos on the Idea Channel that examine the connections between pop culture, technology, and art. The channel focuses on audiences’ natural curiosity and uncovers the interesting and the quirky.

In addition, PBS Digital Studios’ humorous original documentary-style series, Everything But the News, follows Steve Goldbloom’s “misadventures as he attempts to cover the startup scene in California” for PBS’s NewsHour. Both series harness, yet poke fun at PBS’s serious, smarty-pants roots, and in their ingenious execution have broadened the pubcaster’s info-curious audience. No surprise, they’re shared widely online and have won a slew of awards.

TIP #4)   Invite Your Audiences Into the Tent

Nothing honors audiences more than saying, “come play with me.” Usher your audiences into the tent to help you find, tell, and share your story. You’ll learn what makes your audiences who they are, see new creative possibilities for your project, and understand the power of the collective to promote and, ultimately, self correct. But don't invite them in if you want to maintain control or are thin-skinned.  They can cheerlead, promote, and add humor, but also they can complain, criticize, and deface. If you trust them, your fans will take care of the obnoxious or mean-spirited. And, if you do your job right, these audiences will be some of the most valuable and loyal members of your production and marketing team.  With your ongoing content, pay attention to what resonates with audiences and develop new content accordingly. Ask open-ended questions. Invite your audiences to create content around your project. Celebrate and share their responses and user-generated content. Overall, create an organic forum that supports an active, ongoing community around your project. When you’re lucky enough for that to happen, allow it to take on a life of its own and simply feed the beast.

Doritos – Make Me a TV Spot

DoritosTimeMachine/Facebook

A single father directed his son and dog in the 
“Time Machine” ad airing on the 2014 Super Bowl.

For several years in a row, Doritos has won the creative MVP award for Super Bowl ads with their crowd-sourced TV spots. They’ve given their audiences standing and voice by allowing them to create their featured ads, decide which will appear during the broadcast, and choose the $1 million grand prizewinner.

The good-natured humor of Doritos’ 2013 “Goat 4 Sale” and 2014 “Time Machine” winners received high ranks among all Super Bowl ads as most liked and most memorable. Proof that anyone can have a great idea and that inviting and celebrating audience participation is a clever engagement and branding strategy. Embracing audience participation has translated into a significant boost in awareness and sales for Doritos.


TIP #5)   Make Your Fictional Universe Captivating

Characters and storyworlds offer huge opportunities for socialization, especially among comic book-inspired properties, big franchise films, and AAA game sequels. Because young children don’t distinguish between the real world and characters’ storyworlds, characters like M&M’s mascots, Mickey Mouse, Pokémon, Mario, and Clark Kent have populated kids’ entertainment and products for decades. Traditionally, adults were less likely to enter these story universes. Before social media, viral story mythologies for The War of the Worlds and The Blair Witch Project propelled real audiences into fictional storyworlds by making audiences believe they were factual accounts. With today’s sophisticated audiences, such ruses are much less feasible. And, they’re no longer necessary. Now, adults move seamlessly between fiction and reality to enter narrative experiences and engage with storyworlds and characters – from The Hunger Games’ Panem to House of Cards’ Frank Underwood.  Blogs, in-character Twitter accounts, vlogs, and story in-universe Web sites can creatively reveal key aspects of your plot, characters, and storyworld.

The Amazing Spider-Man 2 – Read It…Believe It

The Daily Bugle/Tumblr

Spider-Man’s in-universe newspaper provides 
sharable content to propel the storyline between film

The Daily Bugle is a fictional New York City tabloid that has been part of the Marvel Universe since 1962 and was featured on film in 2002 in Spider-Man. To provide backstory and teaser content for the Spider-Man storyworld in between Marc Webb’s two acclaimed films, Sony’s team created The Daily Bugle newspaper on Tumblr for The Amazing Spider-Man 2. The micro-blog’s online version of the publication has its own masthead, a named publisher – J. Jonah Jameson – a city editor, and various reporters who write stories and editorials. These revealing stories have been shared extensively across the Internet, exponentially propelling the ongoing storyline and teeing-up future films and other in-universe properties.

TIP #6)   Share Your Production Universe

Today’s audiences are prolific media makers in their own right. They may love and understand your production universe more than you realize. Superfans are voracious consumers of exclusive, behind-the-scenes content. You can socialize your media and entertainment property’s real-world universe by leveraging your artists, fans’ social chatter, promotional assets, and production news. Peter Jackson’s vlog diaries of the production of The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit include footage of him at work, live fan events with exclusive film footage, Q & As, “how tos” on post-production, and info on Air New Zealand’s tie-in promotions. Jackson’s steady stream of content about the making of the first installment of the trilogy, The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey generated 800,000 Facebook “Likes” before the film released. Celebrities – including cast, crew, artists, and reality stars – are instrumental in advancing a project’s story and promotion. As a result, conducting social media for a project is often built into celebrities’ contracts, just like press interviews and promotional appearances.

Chef – Cast, Crew, Pets, and Real Chefs

Jon Favreau/Vine

During production of indie film Chef, 
the cast shot many Vines.

Indie film, Chef used socialized video storytelling to engage fans with its real-world production news and actors. Jon Favreau, the film’s writer, producer, and director (and director of elaborate blockbuster CGI action films, Iron Man and Cowboys and Aliens), embraced Vine videos to connect audiences to his small-scale project. During the casting of the film about restaurant kitchen culture and food, he created and disseminated 6-second micro-videos for new cast members, including Dustin Hoffman and Scarlett Johansson. And, he encouraged the actors to make their own Vines.

Throughout Chef’s production and promotion, Favreau issued celebrity intros, behind-the-scenes clips, promotional tour footage, and even videos of his dogs under the Twitter banner, #chef. This generic hashtag also attracted a broad stream of social audiences interested in food and cooking, adding social content from true foodies. His non-fiction narrative married the social currency of high-profile celebrities with the authenticity of down-home posts from real kitchens – delivering the spirit of the film and its subject to social audiences.

TIP #7)   Use Mystery and Reward

Creating intrigue and mystery around a passion topic or project helps it spread. To make content share-worthy, many successful viral entertainment marketing campaigns develop content that first, creates mystery around a passion topic or project; and second, rewards audiences by giving them information or assets that make them feel special or in the know. The powerful tension between these emotions has an amplifying effect. It’s accomplished first by providing teaser content that asks as many questions as it answers to create pent up audience demand; and then by releasing coveted content in a drip-feed to sustain the demand. This places superfans in the position of having content or information first. They share because they know their tribe will be interested and to demonstrate they’re in the know. In turn, audiences in their sphere of influence share it, and so on.

The Dark Knight’s Why So Serious? – Solve the Scavenger Hunt, Meet the Joker

Why So Serious?/42Entertainment.com

The Dark Knight’s ARG gave superfans an immersive 
and rewarding experience.

To unite and activate Batman fans in a interactive quest, 42 Entertainment created a participatory alternate reality game (ARG) for Warner Bros.’ The Dark Knight. The 2007 film’s tagline, “Why So Serious?” gave a nod to the film’s protagonist, The Joker, who had not appeared in a Batman film for almost 20 years. Launched 14 months before the film’s release on April Fool’s Day, the “Why So Serious?” experience connected the fiendish character to audiences’ real worlds, engaging them with in-universe and real-world Web sites that fleshed out the fictional Gotham City universe.

WhySoSerious.com provided audiences with a “to do” list that grew as the film’s release approached, leading them through elaborate scavenger hunts with teaser videos, Web sites, real-world bakeries, and bowling alleys. Superfans who completed these tasks received the ultimate reward of direct communications from The Joker, receiving mobile phones that sent texts about hidden online games and clues. The “Why So Serious?’ multi-month campaign culminated in free tickets to pre-release screenings of the film and engaged more than 10 million unique players in 75 countries.

TIP #8)   Make It Fun or Funny

Social media is a fun release for many people. So, to boost your content’s shareability make the experience fun or funny. What’s more fun than puppies and babies?  The mere sight of them elicits an emotional reaction, which is why photos and videos of animals and kids are the most shared content on social media. Engaging audiences with fun-loving experiences also increases shareability. At the 2014 Grammys, Arby’s jokingly asked Pharrell Williams for their hat back (his signature hat looks like the Arby’s logo) and social platforms lit up. Humor and comedy are so central to the sensibility of shared content that the Shorty Awards (for social media) has a category just for the funny. Go to any of your social platforms’ newsfeeds and more than half of the content you find is someone’s idea of funny. Whether the original story is comedic or not, in many instances you can make its shareable content fun or funny.

Game of Thrones – #RoastJoffrey – Comedy’s the Flip Side of Tragedy

HBO/Twitter

The Game of Thrones hosted an online roast of 
TV’s most despised character in #RoastJoffrey.

The Season 3 Game of Thrones episode, “Red Wedding,” which killed off some of the show’s most beloved characters in a bloodbath, was HBO’s most social show in its history. To capitalize on the vehement conversation about despised character, King Joffrey Baratheon, 360i’s off-season campaign leading into the Season 4 premiere mixed the emotion of hate for the young king with the socially-viral technique of comedy. HBO launched an irreverent social media roast of the program’s reviled ruler on Twitter, Instagram, Vine, and Facebook using the hashtag #RoastJoffrey.

Fans, “citizens” such as Arya Stark and Hodor, stars such as Maisie Williams and Kristian Nairn, and even real-world brands spewed their venom. Game of Thrones’ Twitter account hosted the roast, the hashtag tagged the roast content, and the Web site, RoastJoffrey.com, curated the content. The campaign garnered more than 40,000 tweets, including @Charmin’s, “There are some people so crappy even we won’t go near them. #RoastJoffrey #tweetfromthethrone.” Even rival network program @NBCHannibal chimed in, “#RoastJoffrey? Sounds delicious.”  The roast became a cultural touchstone.

TIP #9)   Be Visual

“A picture is worth a thousand words” speaks to the idea that a single image can convey a complex idea. Visuals are consummate storytelling devices. Not only do they communicate concepts and emotions, but they stimulate memory and retrieval of that complex idea when re-seen. Concept art remains seminal to films’ identities. Who can forget the ominous, massive shark lurking beneath the water’s surface ready to attack an unsuspecting swimmer from the 1975 Jaws poster? Or, Saul Bass’s arresting two-minute sequence for the 1960 Hitchcock film, Psycho, using kinetic typography and minimalistic use of color and graphic expression to portend the horrors of things to come.  Key art is equally critical to videogames because it portrays the overall story universe, the key characters, and a sense of the all-important gameplay. Because human brains are visually wired for survival, art and video are the most-shared content on social media. Use your concept art, poster, logos, color palette, typography, one-sheet, collateral, title sequence, teaser videos, trailers, and sizzle reels to visually tell, and ultimately, share your story.

Halo 4 – Piece Together the Picture

“Fanboys” and “fangirls” of beloved properties and storyworlds are so interested in the minutiae of a project that product news or promotional assets offer viral opportunities. Two days before the official box art reveal for Halo 4, Xbox used the art as a shareable social vehicle to keep fans feeling like insiders. They sliced the box art up into 32 pieces and seeded each piece across 32 popular social fan communities, challenging fans to cooperate and solve the puzzle together. Within a half-hour, the mind-hive audience had solved the puzzle; within an hour, Halo 4’s box art and the social puzzle was the top story on Kotaku and was then picked up by numerous game, entertainment, and news sites. Social conversation tracking  registered a 92 percent positive sentiment. Fans loved piecing together the art to “see” the next iteration of the popular game.

TIP #10) Provide Calls to Action

In order to get things, you must ask for them. If your goal is to get a click, a share, a download, a signed petition, or a butt in a seat at your film, you must point your audiences to it. And, it must be one click away. Audiences will do that next thing when their sense of agency – that they can and should act – is activated.  When audiences directly engage with your project and they receive emotional and tangible rewards through more content, they’re inspired to further engage in deeper actions. Your film or project’s content should offer various calls to action on a sliding scale of investment – ranging from simply clicking on a link up to hosting a fundraising event. Therefore, there’s a place for everyone in your project no matter his or her level of engagement or willingness to act. Over time, audiences will ratchet up their engagement to do more and become your most ardent ambassadors. These calls to action can be about delivering story or sharing content, or they can be about changing the world.

Food, Inc. – Healthier Eating, One Bite at a Time

Food,Inc./Takepart.com

Participant Media’s action platform, 
TakePart provides audiences ways to get involved.

Participant Media’s Oscar-nominated and Emmy award-winning documentary, Food, Inc. by filmmaker Robert Kenner was a startling exposé of the USDA and FDA-regulated U.S. industrial food production system that churns out unhealthy food, often in unsafe conditions. Variety said the film “does for the supermarket what Jaws did for the beach.”

But shock and fear wasn’t enough. There was an opportunity to change audiences’ attitudes and behaviors using the film and the calls to action in TakePart’s awareness campaign and the film’s subsequent FixFood social media and video campaign. Research conducted by USC’s Lear Center showed that emotionally-engaged Food, Inc. audiences encouraged their friends, family, and colleagues to learn more about food safety; shop at local farmers markets; eat healthier food; and consistently buy organic or sustainable food.

Honoring your audiences – listening to what they say, following them where they go, determining what they want, and inviting them to play in the sandbox – is the single most important aspect of making your content go viral. If you want audiences to share a video, retweet a Twitter message, or follow a clue, it must be worthwhile. That’s why you must know your audiences well, because what’s worthwhile to one person is a total waste of time for someone else. Then you’ve rewarded them, whether by unlocking hard-earned exclusive content or delivering a feeling of satisfaction for helping a good cause.

Your shareable content can be the voice of a fictional character, the forum for audience contribution to the plot, the big reveal of the project’s poster, or the launching pad for project news. By using all of your project’s assets, you can create a global, real-time conversation among your project’s follower base of passionates, influencers, evangelists, and content co-creators. These coveted ambassadors can help you explore, embellish, and spread your story.

This article originally appeared on the American Film Market's Producer's Resources and is drawn from her new book, Transmedia Marketing: From Film and TV to Games and Digital Media.

Anne Zeiser is a critically-acclaimed transmedia and social impact producer who has stewarded iconic series and films for PBS, produced news for CBS, managed national brands for marketing firms, and founded Azure Media, which develops transmedia projects on air, online, and on the go that fuel social impact in communities, in schools, and in capitals. She’s the author of Transmedia Marketing: From Film and TV to Games and Digital Media, a new title from Routledge and Focal Press in the American Film Market® Presents book series. Connect with Anne at the book’s companion Web site, on Twitter, and on Facebook.

SEATTLE TIMES ASKS, "DOES GATES FUNDING OF MEDIA TAINT OBJECTIVITY?"

PBS's Rx for Survival - A Global Health Challenge

By Anne Zeiser

The Seattle Times recently questioned whether the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation's media partnerships taint their objectivity. The Foundation's global health partnerships with ABC, PBS, NYT, The Guardian, HuffPost are neither unethical, nor novel. They are about public education on an underacknowledged issue that affects us all -- global health.

Gates' first major global health media partnership, which set the stage for these future forays, was with PBS in 2005 on a multi-platform, multi-year global health project and impact campaign, Rx for Survival - A Global Health Challenge. PBS created a global health transmedia blitz with cross-platform editorial partnerships: an Emmy award-winning PBS documentary narrated by Brad Pitt; a special global health issue of Time magazine, an international Time Global Health Summit with world leaders, content in Time for Kids; 13 global health installments on NPR programs such as "Morning Edition" and "All Things Considered"; and a companion book by Penguin Press, penned by Phil Hilts. 

And to translate audiences' awareness and understanding from the high-profile media elements into engagement and action, the project's social impact campaign, Rx for Child Survival had engagement initiatives for both the public (families, communities, students) and influencers (educators, press, public officials).  It forged impact partnerships with CARE, Save the Children, UNICEF, Rotary, Girl Scouts, the American Academy of Pediatrics, John's Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, the Global Health Council,  GAVI, and PBS's 350 local stations. The vast array of audience participation -- from a new Girl Scouts global health patch and faith-based month of prayer to a new undergraduate course in global health and a newsroom guide for reporting on global health --  raised institutional, community, and individual awareness; spawned dialogue and engagement; and gathered resources and support for global health and child survival.

Given the Seattle Times concern about Gates' coziness with media outlets, highlighting some of the comprehensive developmental research from Rx for Survival is worthwhile. A survey of media outlets across the country showed journalists were neither equipped -- because of the complexity of the subject, nor assigned global health stories by their editor bosses -- due to the perception that global health was not relevant to domestic audiences. Global health fell through the cracks of health care (Medicare and domestic issues) and foreign beats. There was only one global health reporter at any newspaper in the U.S., covered by John Donnelly at the Boston Globe. (That beat has since been eliminated). 

So Rx for Survival and the Gates Foundation understood that one of the myriad goals of this huge project was educating journalists on how to cover the complicated subject of global health and show its relevance to U.S. audiences. Tools included a Newsroom Guide (reprinted due to huge journalist demand) that helped them interpret WHO and other statistics, editorial board meetings with top media outlets on how global health affects Americans, and a National Press Foundation journalists' educational event, filmed and posted online by Kaiser as an ongoing resource for all journalists. (In addition, the project developed tools and curricula for educators and events on the Hill with Congress and the Global Health Caucus).

Shortly after Rx for Survival's launch, Bill and Melinda Gates and Bono were named Time's people of the year, putting global health and poverty on the forefront of American's consciousness. Since then, some major global health victories have occurred due to heightened awareness of global health: 2008 saw tripled U.S. funding for AIDS, malaria and TB and the first year worldwide child deaths dipped below 10,000. With Rx for Survival, the Gates Foundation recognized the critical role of media in creating awareness and understanding -- the precursor to true engagement and action -- around an important issue. Their ongoing work in-country and with the media will only further those advances. 

(I managed the transmedia blitz and social impact campaign for Rx for Survival and many other similar projects for PBS/WGBH in my decade there. As founder of Azure Media, I develop high-profile transmedia projects that fuel social impact.) 

THE SUPER SOUL(-less) of ADVERTISING

Welcome to Super Bowl XLIV on CBS.

What makes this a destination TV event, besides the pigskin thing? It's that the marketing community has successfully created the aura of a cultural phenomenon – between downs – with the viewer enjoying front-row seats to what’s hip and different in advertising. I might grant you the hip, but rarely the different.

Most aspects of the entire event don't change much. A 30-second spot reaching some 100 million, mostly male, viewers costs 2.5 to 3 million dollars, about a half a million dollars down from last year’s prices. Being there still signals a brand's vibrancy...at least for now. This ritual of bated anticipation of funny, cool ads is simply viral marketing with the highest possible cost per thousand barrier to entry. While last night’s hopped- and nachoed-up viewers sought entertaining ads, instead they got a lot of uninspired, formulaic advertising, with but a few exceptions.

Generally, there are patterns in Super Bowl ads and I've clustered them in eight categories: Men Are From Mars, Men Are From Venus, Vroom Vroom, Dogs and Babies, Come on Get Happy, The Gadget, Get the Hell Out of My Biker Bar, and My Turn. Here are some examples from last night’s Big Game:

MEN ARE FROM MARS (THE 15-YEAR-OLD’S VERSION OF THE RED PLANET) – this plays out either as sex sells (the objectification of women) or boys doing dumb things.

· GoDaddy does it with a contrived twist, submitting a homophobic spot to CBS, knowing its rejection would build buzz and drive traffic to the spot’s online presence and awareness of different spots on the broadcast. The rejected spot was a former football player who turns into a flaming entrepreneur using GoDaddy. Instead we get a spate of sexy and mindless spots like a couple of guys logging on to GoDaddy (on a web TV set up) to test some domain names to be greeted by a super hot clip from Danica Patrick, and, they get a different clip for each domain name they enter. Talk about immediate gratification. Other spots had lots of sexy, but boring women talking about how hot that other spot was and how you can see it online. It will probably work, but I don’t have to like it.

· Bridgestone Tires was pretty noticeable, sponsoring the half-time show (more on that later). In the first spot a car-full-o-guys with a whale in the hatchback race to deliver it to the water. At the end of a pier, the young guy driver pulls a half-donut maneuver that launches the whale safely into his natural habitat. Speaks to the product’s benefits, yes, but a little too much of “guys doing stupid things.” In another spot, a male driver would rather give up his wife rather than his tires (misogyny rules).

· Doritos crash casket was one of these. A supposedly dead guy is in his casket full of Doritos during his funeral. He’s munching away watching the game on a small monitor inside of the casket. He bursts out of the casket in exuberance and his buddy saves him by going to the front of the church and singing a redemptive tune as if a miracle of rebirth just occurred. Huh?

· There are other examples from Game XLIV, but they’re so boring and soulless, they’re not worth dignifying.

MEN ARE FROM VENUS, WOMEN ARE FROM MARS – Shakespeare did this best in “Macbeth” and “Taming of the Shrew.” But in this year’s myriad iterations, the men are completely emasculated, whipped by the women in their lives. Must be some kind of commentary on the current state of American men.

· Dockers’ first Super Bowl entry shows men in their skivvy’s traipsing around in fields ready to transform into enlightened men wearing pants…big surprise, Dockers. (N. B. CareerBuilders.com first spot directly followed this Dove spot showing people in their underwear in the workplace redefining casual Fridays, completely killing the surprise factor. Shame on CBS for not orchestrating the flow better.)

· Dove realigns its focus from women to men, also giving us a male coming-of-age story. This time showing a man fully evolved into using grooming products.

· Snickers, which is my favorite in this category, simply puts the cutest woman on television, Betty White, at the Kennedy compound playing football with the guys. Once she gets her candy fix, she transforms into the male fighting machine she can be. Three things make this work: Betty, her impossibly perfect baby blue and white sweater, and the slo-mo camera footage that gives us more time to look at the first two reasons, Betty and her sweater.

· FloTV, a new entry (which I’d never heard of and is also in the Gadgets category) has an ad with a guy shopping reluctantly, but obediently with his gal. He yearningly sees bits and pieces of The Game as he moves around the mall. FloTV shows us how mobile TV can help you bring the game with you.

· Bud Light's entry features a guy leaving the house while his lady is just starting her book club (probably ready to discuss a Jane Austen novel). When he sees they’re serving Bud Light, he’s instantly “in,” discussing the virtues of romantic love or some such thing. Would have been funnier two years ago when “Jane Austen Book Club” was in the theaters.

· Dodge Charger’s repressed guy can’t make any of his own decisions about what he wants to do in life. “She who must be obeyed” is always off screen, but omniscient. She owns his every decision except….what car he drives. The Charger is “Man’s Last Stand.”

VROOM VROOM – horsepower equals virility.

Of this year’s auto brands in the Super Bowl, most are foreign. That may speak to Americans’ decreased trust in Detroit (even though foreign and American are all the same car companies these days). As expected, lots of spots this year.

· Hyundai owned this category in terms of coverage. It sponsored the half-hour “Hyundai Kickoff Show” and had a strong presence throughout the game. The auto maker tried to establish its gravitas by touting stability control features, the love and care of the making in an Alabama plant, and dependability in a spot looking 10 years hence, juxtaposing Brett Favre 2010 as Super Bowl winner with the reassurance of the brand’s known reliability. My favorite was the simple Sonata spot using a play on words on classical musicians’ sonatas, while showing a Sonata being artfully dipped in a vat of paint, finally resolving to a card about its better paint quality than Mercedes’. Surprising theme, except that I recently learned that paint color is one of the top three criteria (features) for people making car decisions.

· VW also tapped the paint color theme and married it with childhood car games in “PunchDub.” It showed people of all types and ages in various situations, hitting their companion and saying “yellow one” when they saw a VW. The last example in the string was Stevie Wonder saying, “red one” and an incredulous Tracy Morgan asking how he did that. This spot used a unifying cultural meme to show its 13 models, not to mention their paint colors. A sweet, thoughtful ad.

· Others deserving special merit were Audi’s spoof on the pressure of living a green life monitored by the “Green Police” and Kia Sorento’s sock monkey and other toys coming to life. The forgettable car ads were Ford Fusion, Mitsubishi Lancer, Acura, Lexus RX, Honda Accord, and mostly Toyota, given all they have going on, they ran old unmemorable old ones. Did they pull some newer or better ones that would make them stand out?

DOGS AND BABIES ALWAYS SELL – A nod to the chicks (literally and figuratively) and the softer side of men.

· Budweiser’s Clydesdales are back and well they should be. Their fuzzy white fetlocks are enough to make you swoon. This year’s episode of the massive equines begins with a foal and a young calf running together along a fence. Three years later, the two big, male beasts (lots of horsepower here) are reunited. The spot resolves to the tagline, "Nothing comes between friends, especially fences." Kind of schmaltzy, but I love horses, so it wins.

· Denny’s was another big one in this area, with a string of spots that worked best if you saw the first one. A voiceover announces to a gaggle (?) of chickens that the Grand Slam Breakfast is coming soon, intimating that egg production must go up. The chickens usher out a primordial scream, which inevitably makes the corners of your mouth turn up. The subsequent spots throughout the game continue the spoof, showing chickens from all walks of life, even male ones with ties (don’t they know only the girl ones lay the eggs?) hearing about the egg-laden Denny special and joining the screaming chorus. I liked them. Funny and memorable.

· Doritos had an ad with a man on a bench taunting a dog with an anti-bark collar to “speak” if he wanted a Dorito. The dog then turns the table on the guy, putting the collar on the human and victoriously grabbing the bag of Doritos. My 5-year-old loved this one.

· E*Trade had several ads with babies talking to us from high chairs and from an airplane about…different stuff. I think it was meant to make the analogy between keeping your dating options open and having a diversified portfolio? The kids were adorable and I watched every moment to see if their body language tracked with the moving mouths. But I got nothing from the ads about the product or a call to action (to go to the site). An example of where the trickery gets in the way of the brand and its message.

· Diamond Foods switched out the concept and had a bunch of humans acting like trained dolphins in a water show, jumping for the reward of Emerald Nuts and Pop-Secret popcorn. Call this one "Stupid Human Tricks."

COME ON GET HAPPY – Food, drink and the Super Bowl equals love.

· Doritos “House Rules” example has the cutest little boy ever eating Doritos as a man arrives to take his mom on a date. As she goes to the next room to finish getting ready the boy delivers the house rules to the suitor, “Keep your hands off my Mamma; keep your hands off my Doritos.”

· Coke’s arrival is actually noteworthy in the context of the cola wars. This is the first time the Atlanta-based purveyor of sugared water has advertised in the Super Bowl without rival Pepsi being present. Pepsi owned the category for most of its 23 years, only going head-to-head with Coca-Cola for the past few. As for Coke’s three spots, the most memorable was the Homer Simpson spot featuring a billionaire who lost it all and gets down to the real world level at a park, is offered a Coke by a regular “Joe” and by association, happiness – all in the joyful town of Springfield.

· Snicker’s Betty White ad could be here also.

· Budweiser had a number of entries in this arena. The first was the house made of beer cans (which was close to belonging in the Men are From Mars category). The best one was the human bridge made by residents of a town whose only egress is that bridge. They come together, lay themselves upon each other to get the Budweiser truck across the broken bridge into town. There was a spoof on “Lost,” an invasion of asteroids that can't stop the party, a direct lift from the “Whassup” spots from years ago, and a spot for Select 55 looked like an afterthought. Overall, Budweiser’s Super Bowl presence was uneven in quality. And, the message was all over the place.

THE GADGET – what’s the coolest technology I absolutely need to know about?

· Google wins this one hands down. It’s a beautiful little narrative love story set to music, beginning with a man entering “study abroad” into the search window, thereafter entering various searches that speak to the evolution of his relationship with a Parisian woman, and ending with “how to assemble a crib.” This ad owned me every single second, made me smile, and reminded me of how great Goggle is.

· FloTV gets a nod for a grown up spot called “My Generation” showing the influence of TV on our lives. It’s selling the medium first and the device second. (The other spot in Men Are From Venus sells the device.) This ad is a bit reminiscent of last year’s Pepsi spot, “Forever Young,” which I simply adored.

· Motorola's ad for a handheld device plays on America’s celebrity obsession and teases the viewer with the possibility of Megan Fox taking a photo of herself in a bathtub and sending it out into the net. The spot shows the wacky possibilities if she did, but doesn’t get too raunchy.

· Cars.com was almost in Vroom Vroom, but on second thought, it was really about the gadgetry of the site. This was a solid spot about the guy who over-excelled at everything from childhood into adulthood. But when it came to buying a car he as out of smarts. So he goes to Cars.com and is replete with knowledge and confidence.

· Intel’s was a cute spot about tech geeks at lunch in a cafeteria talking about how brilliant of an innovation Intel was in front of a little robot invention of theirs whose feelings are immediately hurt. Hard product to sell; cute way to “humanize” it.

GET THE HELL OUT OF MY BIKER BAR – this is the spot (or interview) that simply doesn’t belong.

· Focus on the Family’s pro-life PSA is a clever play on an old theme of putting people where they don’t belong…like Betty White in the middle of a scrimmage. But this one is a non sequitur simply by its presence more than by its creative content. The spot uses Heisman Trophy Tim Tebow’s mom to imply what would not have happened if she’d had an abortion. And it has a bit of humor with him tackling her at the end. It’s a pretty good spot. But the real problem is not the spot itself, but that CBS rejected the “Man Crush” spot for a gay dating service, yet not this one. In the past they’ve rejected ads from Moveon.org and United Church of Christ based on political and advocacy reasons. They have that right to reject spots, but should apply those standards fairly. They should either take them all, first-come first serve OR have fully transparent criteria for what passes muster.

· Katie Couric’s interview with President Obama during the pre show. Huh? What was that doing there? I guess CBS's news guys wanted a piece of the action. Lots of eyeballs on it for sure, but it was just wrong. Like the guy from AT & T’s coverage ads says when his headless image walks around hitting walls. Again, CBS having trouble with flow and contextualization.

MY TURN – the entertainment industry’s chance to sell themselves.

· The best here was the unexpected pairing of Letterman and Leno (who was appropriately self deprecating), along with Oprah playing referee while they watched the Super Bowl. It sold “Late Show With David Letterman” and was a huge endorsement for Leno. This looked like a slight of hand, but was the real deal. It caught my attention.

· Then there were CBS’s ubiquitous ads for CSI, NCIS Survivor and the CBS News franchise. They were business as usual, but I was struck by how much better CBS is doing with hit shows these days. Remember when NBC ruled the networks?

· Katie Couric’s interview with President Obama during the pre show (see above). Still wrong.

· The Bridgestone Half-time Show was a complete debacle. I’m not sure whether Bridgestone owns this or CBS, but I’m going to put it at CBS’s doorstep. The Who? Who picked The Who? This was the most uncool, grueling performance I’ve ever seen at a Super Bowl half-time. The 12 minute medley was like living their 40 drug-hazed years minute by minute. Why not play three iconic songs that suit their aging voices? And then there was the light show, meant to divert our attention from the awful performance. The one moment that showed a hint of talent was the harmonica ditty. There’s simply no comparison to last year’s Springsteen presentation.

· The feature film ads all looked the same to me – all dungeons and dragons. These movies are perfect for the 15-year-old Men Are From Mars viewers. Not one I’d go to, except “Alice in Wonderland,” but then they don’t expect me to come. Then there was the Scorsese film, “Shutter Island.” Looks like signature Scorsese. I’ll see it on DVD.

Fun as it was to watch all of this, what was truly noteworthy is how slowly the old advertising stalwart — the 30-second spot – has entered the 21^st century. The advertising industry has been notoriously slow in understanding the value of multi-platform media exposure and building participatory audiences.

This year finally, some 90% of Super Bowl advertisers are playing these spots before and after the SuperBowl and on another platform. Online, these spots garner some 100 million+ hits in the days after the Super Bowl. A few of these pre-game campaigns co-opt the “wisdom of the crowd” approach and encourage the audience to vote on what spots see the light of day (or night) during the Super Bowl. Last year’s game changer in this arena was the Doritos spot, created by two brothers from Batesville, Indiana, who won an online contest before the game. This year, Careerbuilder and Budweiser, among others, prompted viewers to go online during the game to vote on their favorite ads.

But there are significantly more opportunities for cross-channel or transmedia promotion than advertisers harness, not only online, but also to mobile devices. (What I call on air, online and on-the-go campaigns). Motorola Droid should have blown this one out of the bath water. They didn't. Neither did the movie spots. What about all of those beautiful online movie preview sites; they make those for what reason? From what I can tell, the best cross-channel integration and promotion was done by Google, E* Trade and Boost Mobile via it's "Shuffle" campaign.

It will be interesting to see what kind of audience engagement and interaction (logging online and to mobile devices, Tweeting, participating in chats and blogs etc.), burnishing of brand image, and ultimately purchasing the product or service these ads prompt. That’s the real measure of their success. Then you can truly determine the ROI of these multi-million dollar expenditures. Too often the ad agencies that create them care mostly about audience response to and awards for the creative itself.

In sum, in that arena there wasn’t too much breakthrough creativity in this year’s Super Bowl ads. Luckily, the parts of the TV event in between the commercials with the pigskin and endzone was pretty gripping.

N.B. What if an advertiser skipped an ad’s Super Bowl on-air broadcast debut entirely (saving a lot of money), but developed a major ad campaign launch online and on-the-go (mobile device) around Super Bowl time, leveraging the fervor of audience interest in new spots, and then broadcast the spots after the Big Game when the prices go down?