In yesterday’s post I covered a few Super Bowl
advertisers that seemed to truly understand the role that search can play in an integrated marketing campaign. Users who
headed online to view their favorite ads were greeted by search advertisements that reiterated key themes. Those who clicked
were led to engaging websites offering extra content – outtakes and director’s cut versions of commercials, flash games,
you name it. A holistic experience that felt the same to the end viewer no matter where they were.

Today’s post? About the other folks.

The Chumps

OK, people. It’s 2006. The Internet has been part of our day-to-day business lives for almost 10 years at this point.
Is there any excuse anymore for leaving a URL out of your commercials? I think the grace period on that has officially expired.

However, URLs in commercials were the least of some advertisers’ problems. Many of the ScoreCard’s poorest performers
were invisible in paid search and often buried in the natural listings. Often with good reason – some of these sites were
absolutely horrific.

Let’s cover a few advertisers who graced the bottom of the integration barrel on Sunday:

Practical Solutions (PS) Cleaners
– The Super Bowl has long been coveted as a superior launch pad for new
products and brands. It’s a storied tradition that stretches back to Apple’s 1984 ad and beyond. Practical Solutions launched
their new line of cleaning products this year, with a relatively interesting ad featuring people in bright green biohazard
suits. But head online, and you’ll find nothing. And I mean nothing – after two days of searching, I still haven’t
turned up even a generic corporate site for this brand. Big opportunity, wasted.

Pirates of the Caribbean
– Yesterday, we looked at a
Disney movie that got it right. This would be the opposite. Based on the success of the first film, the new ‘Pirates’
movie has a built in audience that should be interested in learning more about the sequel. However, the film had no presence
in paid search or organic that we could find. Furthermore, the commercial only featured a teensy, tiny URL that I couldn’t
make out even when I froze the ad on my TiVo. After much poking around on Disney’s vast corporate site, I finally found
the site buried deep within the Disney Pictures site. Not bad,
but even the best site in the world doesn’t make a difference if nobody can find it.

McDonalds
– While they’re arguably one of the biggest brands in the world, McDonalds still has a lot to learn
about marketing online. (Maybe Burger King would be willing to teach them?) The burger giant was completely absent from the
search channel. Users savvy enough to navigate to the site directly weren’t much luckier, as they were met by a
jumbled mess with confusing Flash navigation and no clear message.

Tomorrow: Drafting

More to come tomorrow as we take a look at a trend we call ‘Search Drafting’. What the heck does a
stock car racing term have to do with search marketing at
a football game? We’ll explain that and more.

Want to know more now?

Visit Reprise Media to pick up a copy of the full
scorecard and register to recieve a copy of our upcoming whitepaper report.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, February 7th, 2006 at 12:02 pm and is filed under Media Convergence. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.