The Super Bowl is tomorrow and I`m looking forward to watching some good football as well as being entertained by great TV commercials. This year the average spend for the 30 second slots ranges about $3 million –  about the same figure as last year’s average. Just to grasp how much money is to be made, NBC earned over 200 million dollars in Super Bowl advertising  in 2009.

I am looking forward to some of the entertaining commercials from Budweiser and CareerBuilder – both of these companies have traditionally done well. Budweiser has even won a number of top spots in the USA Today Super Bowl ad meter survey in the last few years. What I am a bit disappointed by is how Pepsi shied away from the Super Bowl this year – a fact that Coke knows and will benefit from.

But my main interest lies in the Doritos “Crash the Super Bowl” contest. That’s the viral marketing campaign that the Doritos guys started back a few years ago. The campaign is simple: the public is invited to send in self-made Doritos commercials. The selected finalists get cash prizes and airtime during the Super Bowl. There is a bonus payout of a million dollars if the ad is rated best by the Super Bowl Ad meter.

The simplicity of the idea is the reason for its success. In 2009, the Doritos finalist Free Doritos was one of the best rated by the USA Today survey and created major social-buzz post game. So, I’m very eager to see who will win this year. My favorite finalist is called “Kids these days” (shown below).

The other 5 finalists are listed below.

• House Rules
• Samurai
• Underdog
• Casket
• Smack Out

I know that Social Media isn’t just a fad. I’ve implemented a Social Media strategy that makes my brand visible in the most popular networking places like Facebook, Twitter, MySpace, YouTube… I even have a corporate blog. But now what? How can I find out my efforts count for something?
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The last few weeks have been marred by one too many celebrity deaths. But what prompts me to write this blog is the recent passing away of Gidget – the Taco bell dog from the “Yo quiero Taco Bell” commercials. This dog knew how to appease the taco loving crowd and fueled a successful advertising campaign in the late 1990s.
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Twitter is pretty cool tool for mini blogging. In a recent survey conducted on Target Info Labs, regular readers cited the following reasons for using Twitter as a business tool: Read more… »

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After reading a very interesting article on Facebook Advertising by Larry Dignan I started to think of using Facebook’s advertising platform for B2B lead-generation.

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