So this week we get to play ad executive and marketing director for several major food corporations when they debut their Super Bowl commercials.
Pepsi will apparently skip the Super Bowl, for which commercials are running between $2.5 and $3 million. Instead, it plans to push a social media campaign called Pepsi Refresh, designed to give away $20 million in grants based on user-submitted applications like the one hoping to "build a fitness center for all students in Hays, Kansas."
Coca-Cola turns to The Simpsons in one of two ads slated to run during the Super Bowl.
Rest assured, both companies are likely watching the other's strategy closely -- although it's a great debate as to whether social good or The Simpsons is more popular today.
Anheuser-Busch is using Facebook to stage a vote on whether its trademark Clydesdales will be featured in a Super Bowl spot. The brewery will be running nine advertisements this year.
Three years ago, it was en vogue to use screen images that could only be caught by viewers who had digital video recorder systems like TiVo -- that was the plan for KFC and Sprite. Now companies are trying to tap into media consumers' desire to shape and impact that media.
As long as it doesn't cut down on the ratio of monkey commercials -- Sierra Mist is a Pepsi product after all -- I'm hopeful that the crowdsourcing experiments will at least result in more interesting Super Bowl ads. As always, I'm counting on you, Doritos, and your Crash the Super Bowl contest.
[Image via Flickr: Seattle Municipal Archives]
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