Drew Brees, enjoying the spoils with his family, unbothered by Doritos or Tim Tebow for a 7th Round QB draft pick

Related Reading:

Can the network raise the bar, but it’s not that Sprint stadium

It’s okay, we know you didn’t come here just for the superbowl ads. Let’s tell you more, anyway. Analytics, and not the garden fly variety, are taking over the social world. When Twitter first started paining the game last year with billions of microbuzz d’drib’ molecules last year, it wasn’t early days but a lot of newbies like us built our franchise on it. This time, motorola is shooting for it. Also, there is the other USA today ad meter and hash tags like the #brandbowl #sbads and #SB44 from the company (The Firm)

No longer is it just about wracking your network wires on the you tube page, but that does not mean we have the best ready yet. Here is the USA today page in case you are missing the broadcast..and we recommend the #brandbowl during the game.

The Super Bowl ad touts not a single phone, but Motoblur, the company’s proprietary service that collects social networking data and sends content such as Facebook and Twitter updates to a phone in real time.

I never rooted for any of the Mannings, that ’s a lie — only Manning, Eli mid way in the Giants Season..but Drew Brees is our fave. Get in there.

Like other advertisers, Motorola is building online buzz for its Super Bowl spot. Its Web site has a video of three short, seemingly unrelated vignettes: a boy staring at a phone while something explodes in a microwave behind him; an Asian couple sitting sullenly at a table; and a truck running over a taco stand. Meanwhile, a teaser image for the ad shows a stylish bathtub filled with suds.

Alterian, a Chicago-based marketing company, has been tracking Super Bowl ad-related online conversations since early December. Heading into the weekend, Motorola ranked eighth of 35 advertisers in total volume of social media buzz. The company was 19th on Alterian’s social engagement index, which measures reach and popularity, and 33rd in sentiment.

Keith Tsang, product marketing manager at Alterian, said Motorola’s relatively low ranking could stem from its decision not to reveal its full ad online, as other brands have done.

Related Reading:

The sugar bowl’s hottest recruit for this season’s Draft, #1 QB pick Tim Tebow, lost it to ‘Bama but made up for it when Florida beat the Bearcats 51-24 in the Sugar Bowl.

Tim Tebow has a choice. CBS has sold a 30s spot to a Christian non-profit “Focus on the Family” that is shooting the ad with Tim and his mother Pam to advocate against Pro Choice legislation. Superbowl normally avoids adverts from PETA, United Church of Christ but CBS apparently let this through the gate.

HOLLYWOODGOSSIP had the most organized write up on the new religious argument in the game.

The Superbowl XLIV Line-up

Other important Superbowl happenings:

SunLife Financial has purchased the naming rights for the Dolphins Stadium in Miami. The Canadian Financial Services company gets to be with the crowds cheering the Marlins baseball team, and the College team Miami Hurricanes. The Sun Life Financial Stadium ( yet to be given away to any specific brand within SunLife’s portfolio) will also host the BCS Championship game. Sun Life has also made investments in pre-game and post-game show ads and spots in the Pro Bowl.

Intel’s bringing the post game show to us, with new ads for its Superstars of the Future fun theme

E-Trade’s Super sporty baby is also back.

GM is not here. Chrysler is worried they’ll kick them for spending Obama’s cash. Dodge is coming?

Related Reading:

At $351 m, Manchester United (Michael Owen and Rooney below) is twice the value of AC Milan and 2.7X that of Football club Barcelona (Barca), all soccer teams count in the Top Global Sports Brands. Phil Mickelsen earns $39 million in sponsorships every year and was till now listed behind David Beckham and Tiger Woods.

Cricket has never been counted in the same league and NFL’s Peyton Manning or Tom Brady have not been as high either. internationally, however, A Sachin Ramesh Tendulkar and Virender Sehwag sign 5-6 endorsement each worth INR 10 million and Rajasthan Royals sold its 10% take a year back for $25 million making its valuation of $250 million within a whisper of Manchester United. A Superbowl spot sells for $2.6 million for a 30 s, while Sony sells the Cricket spots for 6 lakhs for 10 s this season or $0.04 million for a 30s push, thats the gap.

Related Reading:

At this stage after the third season of IPL got underway with capped auctions, Media rights continued to take the limelight. At the start of the first edition of the sport, GEO Super in Pakistan and Willow TV in North America had bought media rights for the extravaganza internationally, SET paying $2 b for the 10 year contract. SET MAX has already made profit in the two editions past, and new Outdoor/theater rights were awarded to ESD and MSM bought some before for DTH. The Cola wars were played in he marketing theater, Coke on Air with TV Advertising and Pepsi on ground with MSM. Another word on the sponsorships gone by, Sony SET paid $2 billion while ESD pitched in with an additional $71 million.

Some of us thought that given the brand valuation riding two cliffs already, the third valuation cliff will bring direct benefice to the Franchisees. Again however, the League has stepped in, making it a rather well managed larger cake to share. Yes it’s Google You Tube and given the fracas regarding free feed available and the growing no. of broadband users in India, the Commonwealth and across the pond in US, it is time that IPLT20.com shared the traffic with someone like Google who can definitely manage.

Also we know from our marketing reviews that Online advertising has already been assigned a higher than 2-3 times of the 2007 budget in 2008 and 2009. For regular Cricket and IPL sponsors, that budget has now got a real value for money click at you tube. A streaming IPL telecast, stopped by 5 minutes over the live feed on TV has not cannibalised much in audience terms. Of the universe of 20 million Indian Households ( assuming a peak of 10% of our Market, for TRPs/GRPs/Planning) and another 5 million in other Cricket playing nations, very few would switch off the TV for watching it online. However another 5 million in the USA and maybe an equal number in the 100 odd ICC affiliates would now e able to access live IPL from work and home without resorting to educational and pleading campaigns to promote the game. The USA has obviously thought about Cricket T20 leagues domestically, and the same can be sold much better with a near live feed from the pilgrim’s home as it were.

That said, there were other inelegant reasons, that plagued IPL’s media presence.  Given the lesser budgets and the pressure to earn a tangible ROI, the first lot of advertisers would be a narrow set of new and committed brands. The Vodafone ZooZoos campaign took more than a year to come to IPL, Coke has designed a new campaign for the first time and Pepsi and Hero Honda were the other known brands in play earlier and would probably cross produce online ads as well. The smaller unknowns like Havells and Rajasthan Royals themselves have a unique opportunity to build something lasting, while teams would look to emulate the Royals in getting higher valuations and pawning off minor stakes in the team to build a reputation of positive brand valuation and a mean profit.

Two new teams right away

But enough of boring essays, the game deserves a quick repartee more than extremely long and broing writings and speeches right now. There would be many more chances to dice and slice the IPL’s universe of brands and media rights before we reach a stable set of teams, players and valuations.

The new teams would be more than willing to give a $300 million bid to get a team in IPL. I think the first ones were to be from Ahmedabad and probably Kanpur/Lucknow. Amar Singh would surely be around one of the teams in the latter case. The number of brand ambassadors and co-owners may be willing to lend a hand may not matter as there are only two teams this time around, with a purse that would easily reach $300 million for the franchise itself and only about $100 million from shared rights that Google would have paid coming in as defined revenues. It is a long term commitment and any serious brand missing the opportunity will not be able to come back in this short version of the game. Take out your chequebooks, gentlemen!

The few notes of caution

Some diplomacy would be hurt in each edition of the game with tangible and some larger intangible costs. NFL in its current form was worse off even after 80 years of the Sport and till the 60s. Here, the English, the Pakistani and the Aussies and the Boks would all feel like creating a turf to defend against this juggernaut. It would happen in some form or the other and has to be absorbed in the spirit of the game.

The other note of caution, the tangible returns of each such $1b in rights or $100 million in seasonal costs are not here yet. But they will come and projecting them should be very easy for the owners and the administrators. Also India is already bringing more than 85% of the money to the game of Cricket. The IPL is definitely tilting it into the nervous 90s. The new owners would need to bck it with real commitment and the ability to hold themselves from wasting too much of it on the wrong thing. Enough Said.

Related Reading:

It isn’t early days, no sir

Getting together for the Mountain and the 2012 rush

Of course, out here in this part of the world Soccer is a more easy Football name to mind. But it is not happenstance that America and MNCs led by Marketing of Strong Global Brands from around the world have a time-tested affinity for the Superbowl. Global diaspora have time and again, found the Superbowl to be an exacting opportunity, even as GM, Pepsi and Fedex bow out this year. The Social World and the recession has had a normative effect. We’ve definitely accelerated the availability of Superbowl information this year. Before we in the social media glitterati start congratulating ourselves however, this phenomenon could be derailed sooner with the next Superbowl bring back the previous higher spends and low-marketing dollar Superbowls. This February event would still net the larger dollars as the bookings are full and that would keep us glued to more brand action for the hoi polloi amongst us and the farther reaching shores of the sport.

Nearer home in Asia, IPL has had a exponential normative effect at the same time. And the calendars clash too. So sooner than later despite the different sports followers in both ‘worlds’ we are going to have a unique competitive saga which has never been replicated earlier (muse delta) with NBA or MLB. The game of cricket and the IPL format have run the run-rate of a jingling theater to perfection causing a little heartburn and greater celebration in the cricketing fraternity for the higher dollars and the higher ad-spends. Howver the hyper eclectic ramp up also means the cricketing dollars roi has been weak for the exacting spends ( Obama would’ve stop criticising Landry and Chrysler if he knew) Also, we are just about setting up the benchmarks for each new channel. but, to sign off for now, it isn’t early days, no sir.

Related Reading:

MLB.com just joined the social media revolution in a way that is still as obvious, but probably hasn’t found its way into public domain. The question is if sharing the brand with Twitter officially makes it business-friendly for the sport, ( or consumer brand and advertiser like P&G, Sprint ) In fact as one might feel to be important , does this spread of ‘co branded’ Twitter and MLB/NFL/IPL/NDTV/BofA count for more than the reputation management and the catching up?

Before we move on with the discussion, let’s give the @mashable it’s due

MLB.com Shows You How Twitter Reacts Inning-by-Inning to Playoff Games

With the MLB playoffs in full swing, it’s been hard to miss the chatter on Twitter during pivotal moments during games. MLB.com is now tracking all of that action, and compiling it in an interactive inning-by-inning timeline of each game that compiles Twitter buzz alongside video highlights.

The result is MLB’s “Pulse” feature which now accompanies the Wrap Up of each game. In addition to the graph for each team’s tweet volume and highlights, you can also see all of the tweets that MLB pulled in, so you can see specifically what people were saying at any point during the game.

Unfortunately, Pulse is only available after games, though the team that worked on the project tells me that real-time is in the works for next season. Nonetheless, during games, MLB.com has added a Twitterfeature to its GameDay view where you can both watch a pitch-by-pitch description of what’s happening, and also see all the tweets coming in about the game. There’s also an option to login and post your own updates.

One must first put the facts in place:

A. Twitter chatter has created its own distinctive brand and brand pull for the social maven, the sport and the consumer brand – as Steve Jobs might have once done to Microsoft, It’s hard to ignore.
B. Twitter chatter is fun only real-time for the sports brands, NFL, IPL, NBA or F1 – you can set the watch by the tweets that come, for the game, the plays, the controversial moments or some real tweets as well! – The chatter dies away in twitter gloop soon after the last hit of the game..FACT!
C. The most important for marketers right now is to get into Twitter and stop getting shredded by opinion makers, twitterati and the cognoscenti or just common folk and similarly capitalize on the happy moments for the brand and the game
D. Twitter hasn’t sold the Healthcare bill to anyone
E. Twitter isn’t getting paid. None of the Twitter tools are
F. I believe, in most cases above you can easily substitute Twitter for Facebook. Only that Facebook has advertising and Twitter has more content per second than you would ever think possible and you cannot ignore it! People love to ignore Facebook
G. A lot of celebrity mistakes are already floating around. Bad spats in public domain, recorded in history

So, what does it mean? Well, for one thing the marketers seem to be doing it right. Only there are not enough of them. As usual I find only the Giants of the business game taking notice and spending bucks on Twitter. That is where we are and we are repeating the mistake we made last time as well. This is the crowdsourcing moments that need capturing, revolutions by the moment that can give tremendous leverage to the game.

There is beginning of the rudiments of policy for social media from the NFLs, IPLs and MLB. There is a lot of intelligent analysis real-time that makes my game day much more interactive and me more responsive to the word play and the brand fabric. There is the immediate impact on the brand’s visibility. There has to be now a commercial framework that does not overcharge the premium but also that sheds unresponsible engagement. It does not have to be a discouragement to new users, because any paying mode could be a big discouragement for millions of students, but apart from the crowd’s sway in making you add value there has to be a firm style from each sport brand that keeps tweeters that well tweet great and those that just ride. There has to be encouragement for the millions of listeners who are not there to ruffle any feathers but curious to read on twitter and see where the trend is for the game going on. And there has to be measurable incentive for brand owners and influencers to provide that culture.

Maybe we are the infomediaries of this Invisible Continent. But, maybe there is another revolution around the corner..The consumer’s ‘infrastructure’ requests have changed irrevocably, however.

Related Reading:

NFL Shield

A lot of NFL gets on Twitter too. Apart from the fact that NFL Network has exclusive high quality coverage online with 100% video support and lots of fantasy games for the fans, most NFL players incl Chris Johnson are alive and ’speakalot’ on Twitter. Featured here is how one of the better known teams of the NFL, the New England Patriots have made a distinctive interactive app for Facebook..going into grapping the attention and mindshare of a 100 million odd users..it’s great to see something as entrenched as the NFL going out to bat with the invisible continent and get more touchdowns,! Fire away. (mixed metaphors!, maybe just the Dallas Cowboys losing their hold on the game after not making the playoffs)

[picapp src="e/6/c/d/Tennessee_Titans_vs_3c58.JPG?adImageId=5052038&imageId=6717851" width="500" height="572" /]

Goodell’s NFL has also allowed players tweeting 90 minutes before and fter games, while players were initially even ready to tweet ( or ghost tweet) in between the game. There is a definite affinity for sports and celebrities along with all retail brands to harness the new social media and while accidents have happened, the future of the game is now riding on the new social media first and digital marketing mechanics later.

New England Patriots Choose Facebook as Primary Social Media Hub

You know how bands often tend to put more importance on their MySpace page than on their dot com website? Well, the New England Patriots are now doing something similar on Facebook.

They’ve partnered with Buddy Media to create a new section of their Facebook page, dubbed the “Fan Zone“, where fans can check out a calendar of Patriots-related events, play a Fantasy Forecast game, test their Patriots knowledge in the Patriots Trivia Challenge, send virtual Patriots gifts to their friends and more.

What’s interesting about this new initiative is the fact that none of this is available on the official Patriots website. True, some parts of the Facebook Fan Zone still link to that website, but for the most part, fans would do better to visit the Facebook page than the official, dot com page.

As the importance of social media increases, I reckon that more and more big brands will put emphasis on their presence on social media platforms such as Facebook and Twitter instead on their official websites. Patriots’ Director of Interactive Media Fred Kirsch explains the move: “We really weren’t anywhere [before] as it relates to social media. We had to get into the game, and to have that kind of audience we have on Facebook, you can’t get that kind of immediate impact on [Patriots.com].”

For more on this topic, check out this article: Is Social Media Making Corporate Websites Irrelevant?

Tags: facebook, New England Patriots, social media

via New England Patriots Choose Facebook as Primary Social Media Hub.

Related Reading:

IPL in the dugout

IPL - home to the starry eyed

The NFL is the world’s strongest sports brand according to Sports Pro Magazine. The National Football League, not surprisingly, is valued at a whopping $4.5 billion. That’s a little more than Major League Baseball, about double the value of the NBA, but still probably less than Larry King’s per show kitty.

In Sports Pro’s recent “most valuable brands survey”, the Indian Premier League (IPL) cricket competition amazingly featured amongst the biggest brands too. Despite being only two years old, the IPL is valued at US$1.6 billion, or just under the cost of Mr. King’s monthly hairdressing bill. That’s when you know you’ve made it folks.

via The Sports Brand Review – News – NFL is the world’s biggest sports brand.

Related Reading: