DigitalSpritz

Time Shifting the Super Bowl

Now, I will freely cop to the fact that when it comes to sports fandom, my heart belongs to basketball and tennis.  This is partially a reflection of time spent at my glorious alma mater, where football is kind of an afterthought.  And there's also my status as parent to a thoroughly-Angeleno daughter, who shares my affection for shirtless Rafa's, and who'd rather spend Sunday at the flea market than watch a footballl game.

Don't get me wrong:  I like football.  But when it comes to the Big Dance, I will 'fess up -- I'm in it for the commercials. 

The Super Bowl is still two days away, and I've already seen 1) The Honda "Ferris Bueller" commercial (extended edition), 2) the Elton John Pepsi commercial, 3) the Budweiser hockey commercial, 4) the Pepsi Max commercial with Regis Philbin, 5) practically everything else set to air. 

With all these commercials available online, I'm going to ask the obvious question:  Why pay $3.5M for a 30-second Super Bowl spot?  Is it worth it?

Well, yes.  But that may not remain true, unless more brands follow the footsteps of a curent crop of innovators, who are using the confluence of online video and TV broadcasting to their advantage.  The goal:  To extend the reach of those $116,6667 per-second broadcast investments with the free carriage provided by online media, and to provide a reason to actually watch a commercial during the game itself. 

Doritos, of course, jumped on the online video bandwagon a while ago with its annual "Crash the Super Bowl" contest that invites consumer-generated ad submissions.  The contest has proved so popular that this year Doritos upped the ante, adding Andy Samberg's Lonely Island crew to the mix.  The winner of the contest will not only receive $1M, but he/she will have the opportunity work with Lonely Island on a commercial project.  Excellent reason to look forward to the debut of the winning spot during the game. 

Coke has brought back their popular winter icons, the Coke polar bears, and has created a couple of commercials for possible airing.  The circumstances of the game will determine which commercial is actually shown. The ads will also be paired with an online stream at CokePolarBearBowl.com, which will show the bears in team colors reacting to the game. 

Volkswagen released online video teaser ad "The Bark Side" - featuring dogs barking out the Darth Vader theme from Star Wars - which has racked up more than 11M views on YouTube, and which provides a link to Volkswagen's actual game-day ad ("The Dog Strikes Back"). 

Mobile app Shazam has also jumped into the fray, enabling nearly half the commercials to be aired during the broadcast to be "Shazam'd" for interactive features and special offers.  [You actually don't have to wait until the game - I tested the app on the Teleflora commercial today, and handily received a coupon code for a "Secret Shazam Special."  Who needs some flowers?]

Has it really been only a year since Audi became the first brand to use a hashtag in a Super Bowl ad? 

For those who want to vote on ads, there are two other spots to participate in addition to USA Today's annual Ad Meter -- Mullen and Radian6's Brand Bowl 2012, and YouTube's AdBlitz.

Image from the San Francisco Chronicle

 

 

The Day Twitter Broke the News: Bin Laden's Death

This month's issue of Fortune carries a cover story on shenanigans at Twitter -- claiming rotating executives, Board power struggles, and a flattening growth in users.  Those things may be true, but they're irrelevant, as tonight's events have proved.  Because, once again, the big news was not broken by traditional media outlets in traditional broadcast mediums -- it was broken by Twitter. 

The New York Times has published the details:  A tweet from the White House communications director set off a firestorm of speculation online, which was eventually confirmed by Keith Urbahn, Donald Rumsfeld's former chief of staff, also on Twitter.  The news kicked off what, for me, became the latest iteration of the multi-screen media experience:  Cable news (in my case, CNN), augmented by Seesmic desktop loaded up with Twitter and Facebook feeds, and text messages on my iPhone. The resulting stream of details, analysis and humor more than made up for the fact that CNN's commentators were forced to blather on to fill up airtime until the President finally appeared to make his masterful formal statement.  (AAMOF, I put the TV on mute while I was waiting; Twitter was infinitely more interesting.)

After the President appeared and gave his statement (which no doubt will be the leading video on both broadcast and online outlets for the next 24 hours), I got word that there was already a Facebook page called "Bin Laden is Dead" with 120,000 "likes." 

My point:  In just a few short years, we are no longer able to imagine a world without Twitter, smartphones and Facebook. They've become our collective unconscious, and our conscience, capable of alerting the world almost instantaneously to events both big and small, and in their power, also forcing corrective behavior.  Particularly with Twitter, it's becoming harder for the bad guys to get away with stuff.  It's become so ingrained that, even if Twitter in particular fails, some other service will rise in its place, uniting us in a world-wide network of instant information. 

By the way, kudos to the White House communications team for continuing to beautifully manage news in the age of fluid information.  I may have to tweet about that. 

Super 3D for the Super Bowl

Yes, this is a bit of blatant self-promotion, but I have to get it out of the way so I can get back to blogging about other interesting things in digital media and technology.  Besides, it involves monsters, aliens, lizards and football players -- a pretty intoxicating combination.

So, here it is:  our little company, 3ality Digital, has shot footage for two big events this weekend -- the groundbreaking SoBe LifeWater/DreamWorks/Intel commercial that will air at halftime during the Super Bowl (which is one of the first commercials ever to be broadcast in 3D), and an all-3D episode of Chuck, which will air the following night (February 2nd) on NBC. 

So walk, don't run, to your local grocery store to pick up your 3D glasses to watch these watershed entertainment happenings.  The glasses are free -- no purchase required -- and the red/blue glasses you have left over from Spy Kids 3D won't work:  you need the new amber/blue glasses from Color Code.  Pick up a couple of bottles of SoBe for the game while you're at it, will you? 

Michael Phelps in 3D: Sooner than you think.

So, I've seen the future, and it is Michael Phelps -- in 3 dimensions. 

I was lucky enough to visit the offices of 3ality Digital a week or so ago.  These are the folks who brought you U23D.  I caught that movie on an IMAX screen here in LA, and when Bono reached for me, I got a little breathless, but that experience was nothing like seeing it in 3ality's digital screening room.  After The Dark Knight's raging success, coupled with IMAX's pending transition to digital projectors, there's no doubt that large-format screens and 3D will soon become commonplace at the multiplex. 

But on your television set?  Well, turns out that's just around the corner, as well.  3ality showed me their broadcast set-up.   The camera details are way too complicated for me to explain -- except for the fact that that the device was much more compact than I expected, able to be moved around fairly quickly and flexibly.   The 3ality folks put me and another guest in front of the camera, facing a flatscreen 3-D television from Hyundai.  They handed us each a pair of polarized glasses and hey, presto! we appeared in 3D.  I jumped a little, actually.  (Note:  people look better in 3D.  You lose that flattening and fattening effect that 2D television gives you.)    No fancy pipes, no special broadcast tunnel.  Just the regular stuff, paired with the camera and the television.

Lest you think I'm a lone voice in the wilderness, read my geek crush Mark Cuban's Blog Maverick entry, taken from an address he delivered to the FCC a few weeks ago.  And given his other passion -- owning sports teams -- Mark should know this:  sports is the "killer app" for 3D television, the thing that's going to drive it into mainstream use.   Hence, the need for a portable camera -- how else are you going to get up under Kobe when he dunks? 

Hyundai is already shipping the televisions in Japan, where they are broadcasting an hour of 3D programming a week.  Not much, maybe, but it's a start.  But the big breakthrough will happen here when ESPN Zone sets them up in their sports bars.  Once the fanboys -- on in this case, the fangirls -- get a gander of Michael Phelps in 3D, there's no going back.