Imagine you work for one of the companies paying $3.8 million for an advertising spot during the Super Bowl broadcast. Your commercial will be seen by hundreds of millions of viewers. It will be shown online. Media bloggers will dissect and grade your ad. Plus, your campaign likely has a website associated with it, along with a Facebook page or other integrated components—all tied to a single theme reflecting your brand.
Upon seeing your commercial, viewers will take to social networks, comment on your ad, tweet and re-tweet, mention, post, share. The deluge of data on social networks around that advertising spot will be enormous. It’s not just the Super Bowl—it’s the Super Social Bowl.
Chances are, these organizations are prepared to make the most of their investment. They’d better be if they’re dropping millions of dollars on a 30-second spot, in addition to production costs. It’s likely they have in place tools to monitor traffic and listen to social conversations, to automatically route a flood of new inquiries, to respond appropriately on social networks if needed, and to collaborate internally on any issues that might arise. They have tools that enable the Social Enterprise—like Salesforce and Chatter, Radian 6, and marketing automation.
Organizations using these platforms understand the power of Social. They realize that no matter how much effort and research they put into marketing and advertising to define and promote their brand, the real brand perceptions are controlled by the customer. They have control because when they interact with your company or products, they can quickly take to social networks to voice their opinions (positive and negative) and recommendations (up or down).
Of course, the vast majority of organizations will never purchase air time during a Super Bowl broadcast. Yet it’s not just companies advertising during the Super Bowl that invest precious resources in advertising and marketing campaigns. All organizations do. And all organizations need to embrace the social web and harness social data to help optimize their return on investment, better understand and serve their customers, and position themselves for future success.
Social matters. A lot. For organizations large and small. For the Budweisers and Toyotas and GoDaddys of the world you’ll see during the Super Bowl, and for companies like yours implementing integrated marketing campaigns. If you’re marketing the right way, your customers and prospects will see you—and they will have something to say on social networks. And if you’re prepared, you’ll be listening and engaging in that conversation, gathering intelligence on your customers, and using it to gain an advantage.