For once, the 2013 Super Bowl game was almost as entertaining as all the glitzy ads that vied of our attention between plays on TV (for those who don’t know, the Baltimore Ravens just beat out the San Francisco 49ers in the final seconds of the game played on February 3rd). For many American audiences, the Super Bowl is more than a game; it’s an excuse for people to party, and that in turn creates a huge opportunity for advertisers to promote their products to lots’n’lots of happy people (over 100 million!). And just as it’s a modern tradition to prognosticate before the game, it’s now a tradition to engage in a post-event analysis of the advertisements themselves. This is no small-time endeavor – there’s a lot riding on what we-the-people think of them. There’s even a “long tail “; one website sells DVDs of the top ads of past games.

This year’s crop will provide fodder for coffee-break conversations for days and weeks to come. Although the game itself was exciting and Beyonc√©’s performance was so electrifying that it probably will get blamed for the power surge that caused the 34 minute delay after halftime, the Monday morning quarterbacking was all about the affectionate Budweiser horses who won our hearts and the amped-up lip smacking in the GoDaddy spot that grossed everyone out, and all points in between. And there was something new in the ads as well; according to one marketing watch site, fully one-half of all the ads featured a Twitter hashtag, while Facebook was mentioned by 8% of the ads. What’s so fascinating about these stats is in comparing them to last year, when Twitter and Facebook scored 8 mentions each.

My Favorite Ad (That Wasn’t On TV)

The ad that struck my interest the most was an Oreo cookie ad. No, it wasn’t the ad depicting the quiet-please library food fight (although that was pretty funny), It wasn’t on TV – it was this one, and it was on Twitter:

This particular tweet came out within minutes of the power outage in the early minutes of the 2^nd half that delayed the game. That may be a first for big media advertising, and it was brilliant in its simplicity and execution. According to Adage, that message was re-tweeted 10,000 times in one hour. Oreo’s ad agency wasn’t the only one either. Again according to Adage, “Bud Light and Speed Stick bid on promoted tweets pegged to the term ‚Äòpower outage’, so people who searched for that phrase saw their tweets. “

What’s so cool about this is that it points out in clear and simple terms a lesson that retailers really need to get their minds wrapped around. And that is, in order to build a bias for your brand you have to find new ways to get your marketing message in front of consumers during their “path to purchase ” – which in many (if not most) cases is in the digital domain today.

Next Up: Next-Gen Marketing

In RSR’s September 2012 benchmark study, Marketing in Retail: Making the Case for the CMO, we asked a question:

“Since the widespread adoption of point-of-sale systems in stores in the 1980’s, the POS barcode scan has been a reliable proxy for consumer demand… But that was before the rise of digital selling channels and the anytime/anywhere availability of information that consumers now have at their fingertips. The good news is that retailers have new demand signals available to them to help them understand what consumers want… The bad news is that these new demand signals have to be collected, analyzed, and turned into actionable information… The question is, now that new and much more granular signals can be harvested from the digital channels what are retailers planning on investing in? “

In that study, we learned that almost one-half of Retail Winners (over-performers) believe that investing in a streamlined marketing technology platform is critical, compared to less than one-third of average and under-performing retailers. But there were several pre-requisites identified in the study before retailers could get the value from such an investment. For example, many retailers are just getting started with customer-analytics that can help them understand consumers’ new paths to purchase. And then there’s the problem that internal “ownership ” of customer data is still an undecided issue for many retailers.

What the Oreo “power-out ” tweet shows is that a future where consumers are intercepted along their digital paths to purchase is almost here. If marketeers can send a message out to followers within minutes, imagine what could be done by savvy retailers who know that consumers are interested right now in certain products and services. For example, if you know that Beyonc√© merchandise is hot right now (because she just killed it at her Super Bowl half-time performance) – and you’ve got some in-stock right now, and you knowhow to target a segment of your customer base right now…

…well, you get the picture. So what are you going to do about it?