Robin did an interview with the Wallstreet Journal regarding coca-cola and superbowl advertising. You can check it out here, and I’ve included a short excerpt below.

Questions for Hal Curtis
And Pio Schunker
By SUZANNE VRANICA
March 11, 2008 3:36 p.m.
Super Bowl Sunday may have been five weeks ago, but marketers are still trying to evaluate just how well their commercials preformed during the game.

A new study released this week shows Coca-Cola’s Super Bowl ad staring Charlie Brown was the most talked about ad online two weeks after the gridiron matchup, according to Collective Intellect, a company that analyzes blogs to see what people are posting online about products and brands.

The Coke spot, set at the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade, features Stewie and Underdog balloons fighting over a huge Coke balloon. The two characters bounce around the New York skyline bumping up against office and apartment buildings. The twist: the two are outdone by Charlie Brown, who swoops in and grabs the beverage. The spot cost about $2.3million to create, according to a person familiar with the matter.

Robin Seidner, the director of marketing for Collective Intellect, says Coke’s ad had 350 blog post the day after the game, while Pepsi’s ads had 250 posts. Some ad executives believe the spot has a good shot of winning an award at the Cannes Lions festival, which is the most prestigious honor in the industry. It’s something new for the Atlanta beverage giant, which has been hampered by a lack of sizzle when it comes to its advertising in the past few years. Coke has struggled to create ads that please the younger set and at the same time don’t turn off older consumers.

Tags: Analyzing Consumer Generated Media, Brand Management, Mass Media/Culture, Social Media Metrics // Add Comment »

Nearly two weeks have gone by since No Country For Old Men won Oscar honors for best picture. We tracked 11 advertisers before, during, and after the show to determine blog buzz. This enabled us to calculate a lift value off of the pre-show buzz to figure out who received the coveted earned media share of voice post the event. Overall discussion of the event was decidedly negative with only 32 million viewers as reported by Nielsen.

Probably the most interesting marketing story came from Dove who received the biggest overall lift from the pre-show buzz at nearly 500 percent with their UGC (user generated content) commercial contest. This spot from winner Celeste Wouden spawned comments such as

“Kudos to Dove for knowing how to use Social Media 3 as we like to call it to GREAT advantage! Hey, these folks are REALLY good at creating commercials. Watch out agencies”

Lift Percentages by Advertiser

Tags: Analyzing Consumer Generated Media, Brand Management, Mass Media/Culture // Add Comment »

The stakes are high for this last of the big Democratic primary days. If Clinton surges ahead, she will undeniably be a serious contender again, and if Obama maintains his lead, he can cement his status as the frontrunner, and push Clinton further to the margins.

Using the normal methodology (averaging national and state-focused blog results), the blogosphere predicts a very narrow Clinton lead in both states. It is with some reservation, however, that I post this as a final prediction, because of several mitigating factors– the primary reason being that if only Ohio and Texas blogs are taken into account, the numbers are even closer, but Obama maintains a small lead in both.

I believe a lot of Clinton’s traction in the national blogosphere comes from her recent media blitz—SNL, The Daily Show, et cetera; as well as Rush Limbaugh’s recent advice for Republicans to vote for her in the primaries. The question is if all this national coverage will actually influence voters in the states.

Our methodology for blogosphere primary predictions worked much more consistently early on in the races than later (and in general, Republican primaries were also easier to predict). One reason for this might have to do with the saturation of the data during the multiple races on Super Tuesday. But a more interesting hypothesis is that the national trends, coverage, and dialogue, are no longer as big of influencers on the state-level political process. Perhaps more and more people are ignoring the national pundits and TV appearances, and focusing on the local campaigns, speeches, and issues.

The two-data-point methodology was put in place to ensure that the small sample of local political blogs was not skewed, and it was balanced out by the national conversation. Maybe though, as the races go on and on and are focused longer on particular states, the national conversation is becoming less relevant to the results. Or perhaps, after the saturation of Super Tuesday, the collective opinions of the national blogosphere will be more accurate than a smaller local sample.

Even though the aggregate data predicts a Clinton win and the numbers are very close, I’m going to go out on a limb and put my own personal faith in the state-based projection– and call both races for Obama. As the race goes on, I believe the importance of national punditry in state races is diminishing.

But regardless of the end results, tonight will certainly be interesting.

(We ran data for the almost-settled Republican race as well, showing an overwhelming McCain lead—69% in Texas, and 81% in Ohio.)

Tags: Analyzing Consumer Generated Media, Blog Analysis, Mass Media/Culture // Add Comment »