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Media consumption has become 'enhanced'

MediaPost Publications, 8/24/09

Abstract:

With football season upon us again, many Boomers remember the first Super Bowl, good ol' Super Bowl I. We also paid attention when Apple's "1984" launched the focus on Super Bowl ads. And we've probably been responsible for creating the hype over those Super Bowl ads that now seems to exceed the hype over the football game. These days, with video streaming on the Internet, we're now experiencing more replays of the ads than of the game highlights.

Football seasons come and go, like Brett Favre, and how we experience them, and the related advertising, have changed dramatically. Nowadays, though, many in media planning think today's Boomers are stuck back in the days of Super Bowl capital letter "I." But we're not. We're clued in.

A case in point from this past year's Super Bowl was GoDaddy.com's ad featuring Danica Patrick, the female Indy race car driver, in a spoof of a Congressional hearing into a major league "enhancement" controversy. Under questioning, a series of voluptuous young women vehemently deny being "enhanced." Then the camera shifts to the comely but - ah, shall we say - slender Ms. Patrick, who announces, "Yes, I've enhanced." The crowd gasps. "It's true," she continues, "I have enhanced my image with a domain and web site from GoDaddy.com." The end of the ad invites viewers to visit the GoDaddy.com web site where they can view a "hot" Internet?only version.

The streaming video version got 1.6 million views on the Spike TV web site. How do we know it was even there? That's where a Boomer buddy of ours told us to look.

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