When it comes to the most precious commodities on Earth, things like weapons-grade plutonium ($4,000/gram) and diamond ($55,000/gram) need to be put into perspective against commercial time during the Super Bowl, which weighs in at $5 million for a 30-second spot—that's an astonishing $166,667 per second.
You'd imagine that if your organization were going to spend that much to air a spot—not even taking into account filming and production costs and landing a celebrity spokesperson that will get people talking—you'd make sure to fully capitalize on the investment by coordinating all arms of the public-messaging apparatus to keep the conversation going. And yet, of the brands behind the most-talked-about ads (Budweiser, Mr. Clean, Skittles, Kia, Audi), none of them took to Twitter and Facebook the morning after the Big Game when the water-cooler chatter was in full swing. Even 84 Lumber, whose website was brought crashing down by increased traffic in response to its short film about Mexican immigrants journeying to the U.S., didn't have anything to say.
This seems strange. The word "conversation" is used ubiquitously today, especially in the context of social media, to illustrate a continuous stream of interaction between brands and customers. That stream should be a mighty torrent after millions watch your commercial. So what gives? Have these brands really not planned ahead well enough to capitalize on their ad spend via some no-cost social media posts? That beggars belief. Are their marketing departments concerned that any further messaging might dilute the impact of the carefully planned commercial they just ran? If so, are the PR departments in agreement on this point or have they been overruled?
Tell us what you think is going on from a strategic perspective—and what you would do if you were running communications at these brands—at @PRNews or in the PR News group on LinkedIn.
Follow Ian on Twitter: @ianwright0101