I made the claim in a previous article (If everybody loves Super Bowl ads, then why don’t advertisers always make Super Bowl-quality ads? on Spark Minute) that all ads during the Super Bowl should have pointed people to a website or some type of social media interaction. In a single 30-second advertisement, I argued that it’s very difficult to introduce a new concept in an ad and then motivate people to purchase.

Times Square Collage

Prior to social media advertisers solved that dilemma with frequency. There was this theory that if a person simply sees an advertising message three or four times that’s all the motivation they’ll need to purchase. In my early days of advertising (prior to the public proliferation of the Internet) I designed these programs that did regression analysis that showed the success levels of reach and frequency, the two critical variables in traditional advertising campaigns. By early Lotus standards, these simple line charts were state of the art and my analysis really impressed the client. I look back at it now and I’m amazed I wasted my time on so much BS.

Use traditional ads to launch social behavior

Traditional interstitial advertising has such a great potential to initiate a relationship or begin to tell a story. With a traditional ad (print, radio, TV, or online) you can reach many people and:

  • Tell the first 30-seconds of a story that’s continued online.
  • Engage people to contribute their own version of a story or their opinion.
  • Run a contest for which going online and participating in a social network is a requirement for entry.
  • Give something away for free (e.g. images, logos, a song, wallpaper, ringtones, an article, a video, etc.) by directing them online.

Why wouldn’t you send people online?

One person argued in my Super Bowl ad article that sometimes there’s no need to send someone online. But why not? In the online world you can massage the relationship. You can create tools to allow your audience to distribute your story virally. My question is, what would be the one case where you wouldn’t want to do this? I don’t think there’s any. Can you think of one? All brands want to improve its relationships with customers. In the online social space, relationships can form and strengthen to the point of creating loyal customers.

Will the future of traditional advertising simply be a tool to initiate an online relationship?