Cheap Thrills and a Super Bowl Postscript

Today’s post will be brief. I spent a good part of the day with some of the folks at the Dingman Center for Entrepreneurship, part of the Robert H. Smith School of Business at theUniversity of Maryland. The discussion centered on definitions and impacts of Web 2.0, and included entrepreneurs, venture investors and technologists. It’s always fascinating to hear others’ perspectives on top-of-mind subjects like this. Many thanks to Asher Epstein and Adam Lehman for giving me the opportunity to participate in it.

There are two articles in today’s Wall Street Journal (subscription required) which provide great proof points for my presentation today. First is an article on how emerging technology companies are making smart use of word-of-mouth, blogs and viral marketing tools rather spending excessive amounts on traditional mass media programs. It would appear that today’s start-ups are savvier than their predecessors from Web 1.0. Of course the WSJ also points out that necessity is the mother of invention, and that it might be the result of the practical reality of the current economic environment. Either way it’s a significant trend and one the Fortune 1000 could learn from. 

The second article in the Journal is about the relative ineffectiveness of Super Bowl ads in driving site traffic. While a handful of advertisers saw traffic spikes the day after the game, many who were counting on this as a centerpiece of their marketing programs didn’t.

More evidence that marketers should think twice before laying out big bucks on mass marketing programs.

Addendum:

comScore Networks just issued a release regarding the spike in traffic after Super Bowl ads.  Predictably beer, cars and babes (Go Daddy) did very well. This data is in stark contrast to the WSJ report I posted about earlier.  Yet another example of the disconnect in blogosphere measurement.  As Steve Rubel said yesterday:  who's going to set some standards?

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