This post is a few weeks in coming but I was thinking about it again last night after watching this video (and Carol Kruse from Coca-Cola made the same point on the video) so I thought it was worth posting.
I've been talking a lot lately about content being the new (and I contend it's the best) kind of promotion strategy. For instance, last week I wrote about creating compelling, valuable content using the Old McDonald method to jump start your thinking and previously wrote about the filters we all have to keep out those 3000 to 5000 ads hitting us every day. Interestingly enough, a traditional media event, the Super Bowl, supports all of this thinking.
Think about it. The Super Bowl is the one day of the year when people are as interested (if not more) in the advertising they will see as the event itself. It's like the entire nation decides to collectively turn off its ad filter and sits back and says, "Advertise to me!" The funny thing about this is that these ads aren't really ads, they're content...heavily branded content. The advertisers know the mentality is different on Super Bowl Sunday than any other day of the year so they think about how they're going to entertain people. This shows that marketers can think as content creators when they choose to but that they simply choose not to do so the rest of the year.
If we follow this rationale further, Super Bowl Sunday shows us that content works when you get through or around people's ad filters. I believe new media marketing tools like blogs, podcasts, online video, etc. get around people's ad filters all the time because they are chosen for consumption. In other words, the consumer pulls this media to him or herself whereas regular advertising is pushed on him or her...and how many of us like to have anything pushed on us? Yeah, I don't either. New media marketers try to put themselves in a position to be pulled as easily as possible and that's all a content promotion is, something that people want to pull. Given all of this, my conclusion is that for new media marketers, every day is Super Bowl Sunday.
[HT to Eric Holter for saving the video mentioned above via his Del.icio.us account. It's a good (dare I say delicious?) feed to follow. Eric is also a huge New England Patriots fan so any resurfacing of old wounds he may experience as a result of the Super Bowl mentions above are purely coincidental.]