The River

The personal professional blog of Pamela Parker -- musings on marketing, advertising, media and technology.

Pamela Parker

Budweiser’s Online Boost

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Budweiser

This might be kind of old, but I’m just taking time to look into Super Bowl phenomena. I saw the coverage of how Budweiser decided not to run its “wardrobe malfunction” lampoon ad on the big game, but I didn’t realize that the company had (completely understandably) decided to make the ad (note: WMV for high-speed connections) available on its Web site. Even if AB never intended the ad to appear on TV, it got great mileage from the publicity it got from “pulling” the ad, and it still got to distribute it. The Budweiser.com home page touts the ad with these words: “Exclusive. Get the ad you won’t see on the big game.” Would love to see the viewership stats when all is said and done.

Incidentally, the “send to a friend” feature says: “RESPONSIBILITY MATTERS – Please do not forward or show this commercial to friends who are under the legal drinking age.” So I’m counting on all of my young readers to forego the commercial watching experience. Hide your eyes when beer ads come on
TV.

UPDATE: There’s even an online ad campaign to draw people to the online spot. Saw it on The Onion. (screenshot here)

Teaching BzzAgents Etiquette

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The controversial BzzAgent posts on the basics of online community participation: lurk before speaking up, only join if you really intend to participate long term (don’t pop on once just to shill a product), and make sure your product mention (bzzing) is appropriate to the forum. Kind of crazy that the company hasn’t laid out guidelines like this before, since they seem so obvious to anyone who has participated in an online community.

Still, it’s a good step. Also perhaps foreshadowing the Word of Mouth Marketing Association‘s soon-to-be-released ethical guidelines document. BzzAgent’s Dave Balter is a co-chair of the committee putting the guidelines together.

The Vote

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Rushkoff and commenters cover a lot of my (very mixed) feeling about the news this weekend concerning the Iraqi vote. Hard not to get teary hearing voters talk of what the vote meant to them — especially when they mentioned their family members’ ill treatment, or death, at the hands of Saddam Hussein’s regime. Still, one can’t help but doubt we’re getting the full story on CNN.

I am out today at

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I am out today at the ISIPP conference. No reliable wi fi but will post later if interesting stuff is discussed. Happy weekend everyone!