The Baltimore Ravens are officially the Super Bowl winners of 2013. But now the real question is, who took home the trophy for best advertisement of 2013? The Super Bowl is known for its infamous line up of commercials, generating massive amounts of internet chatter throughout the night. Sunday night alone brought in 24.1 million tweets, surpassing the 23 million that took place during the 2013 Presidential election. According to an article posted on CBS News, “39 percent of Super Bowl viewers said the commercials were the best part of the game; the game itself came in second with 28 percent liking it the most.”

For 30 seconds of Super Bowl air-time, advertisers pay close to $4 million! Is it worth the money? What does it take to be the best (or worst)? Also, what emotions must be evoked to entertain the millions of viewers across America? Is it humor? Sentiment? Pride? Suspense? Whatever it may be, expectations are high and continue to increase. We want to know who you think prevailed! Who was the Super Bowl Advertisements XLVII winners of 2013? Please share your comments and opinions below.

April’s Favorites:

1. Seth Rogen and Paul Rudd for Samsung

2. Best Buy Asking Amy

Nate’s Favorites:

1. Hyundai Santa Fe – ‘Team’

I think what did it for me was a kid wrestling a Grizzly Bear.

2. TIDE – Joe Montana Stain

I liked how it featured both Super Bowl teams and the most iconic player from the 49ers while still being very product oriented and creative at the same time.

Facebook has taken it’s new Timeline layout to pages.

Facebook is bringing a significant change to the way businesses are displayed on Facebook by introducing Timeline for pages.  The most obvious change is the layout.  The cover photo will allow businesses to express their brand in a creative manner.  The goal of the change is to give brands their identity, and to emotionally connect with users.  Instead of brands pushing their product to users, Facebook is trying to connect brands and users with tools that will allow more of a connect and open communications with each other.   Rather than the cookie cutter feed-like display you would normally get in a brands page, the cover photo, and the featured posts are among the elements that ve your brand its identity on Facebook.  You can use Timeline to tell the story of your business.  You can note ‘milestones’ on your page.  Examples of milestones would be; the creation of your business, an evolution of your business, product announcements, major announcements, etc.  All will be displayed in wide attractive images.

One interesting addition Timeline is bringing to pages is ‘pinned content’.  Basically how this will work is it will pin a post to the top of your timeline that will act as your ‘post of the week’.  It will remain above the fold over other newer posts until it is unpinned.  This will allow for major postings (whether they be announcements, offers, etc) to remain the featured post.  Brands can direct users to their landing pages and apps within their pinned posts as well.

Facebook is referring to Timeline for pages as a brands ‘Mission Control’.  Administrators of pages will now have the ability to approve posts for users, and it now allows for direct messaging between Facebook users and brands.  At the top of your page, when logged in as an admin, an administrative panel will drop down listing stats, messages, recent likes, click-thru’s, etc.  Administrator permission levels are also being rolled out, giving users the appropriate level of administrative access to the admin panel of a page.

Timeline for pages is available now.  It will be a mandatory change for all brand pages on March 30th.

Liquid Creative converted to the new Timeline this morning.  We would love to share it with you, and encourage you to Like our page for future updates and to see how we utilize the new Timeline layout.

http://www.facebook.com/LiquidCreative

Growing up in a home with all brothers and a dad who loves football, Super Bowl Sunday always meant to me a celebration of the final day of football!! And let’s not forget, the ability to finally have a vote for what we watch on the living room TV.  It was at an early age of around 10 when I realized I was, “only watching for the commercials.”  I began to love the ads and studied them, choosing my favorite brands and determining which ones did a better job from year to year.  To my own surprise, I found myself looking forward to Super Bowl Sunday’s advertising every year!

This year was another fun evening of advertising, hearing the family laugh, seeing my 88 year old grandmother’s jaw-drop, and witnessing my dad’s smile when he related to one of his favorites, Clint Eastwood and the message about hardworking Americans.  Analyzing their reactions and comments left me wondering, did the advertising resonate and did the ads reach their target markets?  I know my brothers and the 5 other men in the room wanted to buy flowers, computer hosting services and possibly a KIA by the end of the game.  I know every woman in the room, including my grandmother were talking about Beckham well after the spot ended and then were “shushed” because the game had come back on. Continue reading →

We might as well accept it, social media is taking over the web.  As of December 2011, 64% of all internet users in the US are on Facebook, which boils down to 50% of the US population as a whole.  It’s a powerful thing, and is changing the way we use the internet.  While Facebook is by far the most popular social media platform, its still just one among dozens of others.  If used wisely, social media can be an invaluable tool when partnered with your website to expand your web presence.  Best of all, its free!

Small businesses can be one of the largest benefactors of social media.  Social media is free to setup, and instantly gives businesses the ability to provide real time news and updates through their social media followers.  We will elaborate on how to utilize social media more in future posts, I am going to focus briefly on how social media can be utilized on your website.  When a small business has their site up and running, one goal for the business should be to attract visitors to their social media pages.  If you can get someone to ‘Like’ your page, you instantly have direct real-time communication with that person (and often the people in their network).  We want to encourage visitors to connect with your business on social media.  Having a facebook feed in your website is an option, or simply putting Facebook share icons, or ‘like’ buttons in your website’s posts can get your content on social media without people needing to ‘like’ your business.  Any way to get people to share your website content, or mention of your business on social media is beneficial.  Think of social media as a pond or a spider web.  Getting your content shared on facebook can cause a ripple effect  carrying your content to each visitors unique social spider web.  It’s only one click from the visitor.  Getting interesting content on your site, and making the social media sharing options visible (and not intrusive) should be a goal. Continue reading →

One of the most important elements to a successful social media campaign is one that is most often forgotten.  These days most businesses and brands have taken the step into the social media revolution. They have Facebook pages, Twitter Feeds, and started a blog but they often forget one important step:

Where to Start

Letting their customers and potential customers know about their social media presence.  One of the first things we recommend is using your current customer base as a way to gain quality followers.  We suggest emails and postcard mailings letting people know that you are now on Facebook or Twitter and letting them know exactly what they will get out of being a fan of yours.  Additionally we recommend adding the social media icons to your business cards, post cards, signage at your storefront, and on your website.

Those are the basics and we have started sharing some examples of how companies are sharing their involvement with social media on our Facebook page.  We are going to start posting photos of these good examples in an album on Facebook. We’d like to involve our fans and customers.  Between now and January 3, 2011 we want fans to post pictures of creative ways that they promote their involvement with social media. Or they can post ways that you see others promoting their social media presence on our Facebook wall.  Those that post photos with a description will be entered into a drawing to win a $50 VISA gift card.  The winner will be selected by random drawing and you receive one entry per uploaded photo example.  Photos and entrant name must be uploaded to the Marketing Mud Facebook Page Wall.

We hope this is an exciting way to learn about how to get new followers on your social media sites.  Please feel free to ask questions on our Facebook wall and please share this with others who might be interested.  Thanks fans!