Let’s look at the facts:

• Unemployment in America is staggering
• This Week Obama Recognized Small Business Needs Help
• Google dominates the market (aka – no need for brand marketing)
• 2010 Super Bowl ads went for 2.6 milion for 30 seconds
• You can be an idiot and still derive value from Google.
• The Super Bowl Has Little Significance outside of North America

Super Bowl 44 provided sports fans what they expected.  Sunday February 7th gave viewers nail biting sports drama, nostalgic music, and a line up of commercials for all to enjoy.  One of those commercials was the first Super Bowl commercial ever produced by Google.  Upon its airing, Twitter lit up with energy and the blogosphere proclaimed that Google had produced the greatest commercial of Super Bowl 44.  The problem is that Google failed America.  Here’s why.

Google dominates the Internet.  So much so that they can actually entertain an action that no American business has ever considered–pulling out China.  While Americans are being displaced from their homes in the largest foreclosure market to hit the United States in decades and small business owners struggle to operate in the worst credit conditions since The Great Depression, Google employees are bathing in stock options and bonuses that were last seen in the dot.com bubble.  Don’t get me wrong as I think it is great that Google is doing well as a business and that the careers of their employees are secure.  Still, when you decide to spend 2.6 million dollars, you would think that Google would make some sort of attempt to connect with the reality in this country.  It is a Web 2.0 kind of thing to do.

Google’s Super Bowl ad accomplished the equivalent of a “How To Use Google” in the context of finding services in Paris, France.  Let’s work through the facts again:

• Paris has nothing to do with the Super Bowl and Americans really can’t afford to go Paris this year.
• People use Google by default and with suggested search they need no additional help
• At .44 cents per stamp, Google sent letters to every small business in the country trying to explain their Local Business service.

Let’s skip forward to the last point.  Google had the opportunity to highlight its Local Business service during Super Bowl 44.  The 2.6 million dollars it would have cost to accomplish this would have been a fraction of the price tag it cost to “snail mail” letters to every small business owner in the United States.  In doing so, they could have inspired small business owners to update their listings and at the same time educated consumers as to how to search for local services.  They could have also focused on searches, products, and services that were relevant to the Super Bowl’s host city Miami.

The Super Bowl has historically been the advertising platform for advertisers to mark their place in brand and creative history.  With a brand that is as solid as “Kleenex” and creative that is becoming of a company full of mathematicians, one has to ask what Google’s Super Bowl 44 advertisement accomplished.  A naysayer would quickly point out that they are filthy rich and that 2.6 million dollars is a drop in the bucket.  My response would be that their approach was very Web 1.0.  Google shouted at people versus providing them with information that they needed.  Somewhere in New Orleans there is a small family owned business who is faced with an invoice from a telephone company who is trying to impress upon them that the phone book is their avenue to connecting with customers.  In their Sunday afternoon attempt to take a break from the reality of business in a tanking economy, Google could have provided them with insight that could have changed their small business course tomorrow morning.

Google Marketing, you failed America on February 7, 2010.

One of the most amazing things I find about being a professional in Dallas is who comes and goes in this city and no one knows.  While our mainstream media is fixated automobile accidents and the latest twists of 20 year old city hall battles, some amazing people come to Dallas without much recognition.

The first time I realized this is when The Indus Entreprenuers (TIE) organization brought Ram Shriram in as a keynote speaker to a yearly event they hold.  I sat there in the audience of roughly 250 and listened to a speech that literally changed my career.  I actually got a chance to speak with him after his keynote which was an added bonus.  Who is Ram Shriram?  He’s the guy that listened to the founders of Google when no one else would.

We have actually had a couple of those opportunities since then.  Most recently Brian Clark, a.k.a. The Copy Blogger, spoke to a very small crowd a the Dallas-Ft. Worth Search Engine Marketing organization (DFWSEM).  If you’ve missed those and are kicking yourself, you don’t want to miss the opportunity to hear Chris Brogan.  Chris Brogan and Julien Smith co-authored the NY Times best seller Trust Agents.   The book unveils many insider secrets to success in the world of social media by two pioneers in the industry.   Trust Agents is one of the most responsible books I have read on Web 2.0 to date.

Chris’s appearance is brought to us by a relatively new professional organization in the DFW area called Social Media Club Dallas.  The club is one of the most approachable professional organizations I’ve engaged with in a long time.  If you are a traditional marketer, you really should not miss this event as it is a great opportunity to hear one of the thought leaders in social media speak as well as engage with a great local professional organization that is open to marketers of all walks.

For more information visit the Social Media Club Dallas presents Chris Brogan on Event Brite.  The event is on Thursday, January 21 and will be held at the Angelika.  The address is:

Catch phrases are helpful in marketing, but if a brand can move beyond just a catch phrase to a point of sale, it is even more valuable.  Consider Nike’s “Just Do It” slogan from years ago. It still rings in the minds of athletes and non-athletes alike.  “The best part of wakin’ up, is Folgers in your cup” has been sung by both the caffeinated patron and the non-patron.  Slogans such as these run through our minds and bring back a sense of warmth and wonder of a particular season of life when we were watching the commercials and seeing the billboards.  They influence our choices as we peruse the aisles, guiding us to the brand that we purchase.

When considering service companies, branding can go much further than a catchy slogan and drive the potential client to initiate a phone call to your company.  What is your point of sale and how quickly can you get an interested buyer involved?

A great example of this comes to mind when ordering flowers.  When an unexpected occasion comes up and you need to find flowers, what is the first slogan that pops into your head? Is it a slogan, or is it a phone number? I couldn’t tell you the slogan for 1-800-FLOWERS (if they even have one), but I can tell you their phone number. I know that when a last minute floral need arrives, that is the place I’m going to call.  In other words, “Cha-ching!”

Vanity numbers can be one of the most effective ways to drive a point of sale to your business.  They work excellently for generic service needs.  There are other service companies that are using this technique of branding their businesses including: 1-800-Plumber and 1-800-Lawyers.

In writing this article we spoke with Keith Glass of 1-800-Plumber.Com, a national based plumbing company that just recently launched franchises offering plumbing services in Naples and plumbing repair in San Antonio, who commented, “People only call a plumber when they need one and many times it is a flat out emergency.  We built the 1-800-Plumber.Com brand on the premise of being a nationwide, one phone number to call for all your plumbing needs.”

800 vanity branding also sets an expectation of high quality service levels and immediate response.  “Prior to launching the brand, our focus groups confirmed that our phones would need to be answered 24X7 and that our franchisees would need to be outfitted with the most modern technology in the plumbing business.  We had already committed that level of service; yet, the brand expectations re-enforced our need to deliver upon it,” commented Glass.

The one downside with vanity phone numbers in general is that the numbers and letters in today’s modern phone devices do not line up on BlackBerry hand helds and other phones that have computer style keyboards like they did on the old rotary and standard key pad phones you found hanging on the wall in your Mom’s kitchen.  I bring up this point not in an effort to steer you away from vanity branding but it is a point that should lead you to ensure fine details such as including the actual numerical version of the number in your marketing as well as having hyper-link clickable versions of the phone number on your website so that modern phone users can Google, click, and call.

Marketers are finding that vanity 800 numbers are effective in information retention for potential clients and are  training people to look for vanity numbers.  Vanity 800 numbers such as 1-800-Call-ATT make ATT customers feel at ease, knowing that they won’t have to shuffle through numbers in order to find the customer service line when they have account problems. The goal of every successful marketing campaign is to make systems simple and your company, where they’ll spend money easy to reach.  Vanity 800 numbers are one excellent solution to reaching that point of sale.

Path To Peace

One of the key differentiators between the Web 1.0 world and Web 2.0 is that Web 1.0 was defined by shouting out one way messages to consumers where Web 2.0 is about conversing, sharing, and in many cases paying it forward.  Ironically, when I visit the blogs and websites of some of the top social media personalities in the industry, I find websites with brash “Hire Me” graphics and a lot of copy written in second person.

This past Sunday morning while catching up on trade blogs, I came across a good post about using Twitter lists on Mashable.  Not being familiar with the author, I went to her personal blog to check it out.  The most recent post she had about her dedication of her birthday to cause she is involved in related to the Rwanda crisis called Path To Peace.  An no where to be found on this site was the typical horn tooting that has become way to popular on the sites of influential social media professionals.  How refreshing!  I was also really impressed with the project Path To Peace as it is an effort focused on the future versus the past of Rwandans.

Getting back on topic, one tendency in social media has been the obsession with numbers of followers, retweets, etc.  I think all marketers should take a step back, however, and evaluate their social media presence against softer measures such as community contribution including paying it forward.  How many posts, retweets, or track backs have you or your company made to help others?  Have you promoted a cause?  Are you giving before you sell your services?

Taking my own advice I am going to specifically ask the question of my employees when it comes to our sites such as MidwestSportsFans.Com and DallasSportsFans.Com as well as this one I am writing on.  I will say that this week alone I handed an influential social media consultant in the Dallas area a huge opportunity that was better suited for his experience versus ours.  I also brought one of our favorite SEM firms into a great opportunity and contracts are already being exchanged.  I’m feeling great about the “thank you” I got from both these partners of ours much more than any retweets and track backs I’ve gotten this week.  Still, I really have to think through how to quantify this and what the social media world is missing in terms of tracking people “paying it forward”.