Welcome to the Inaugural SM2 Buzz Bowl!

For years the Super Bowl has represented the pinnacle of the creative and traditional media advertising world.  In a single spot brands can reach an audience of hundreds of millions and they've been willing to pay millions of dollars to do so.  Even as the economy has suffered, and the big 3 of TV, print, and radio have seen their ad revenue decline by some $10B, the Super Bowl has remained strong, almost as an iconic vision of the historical dominance of the 30-second spot.

This year, however, promises to be different.  For the first time some of the large brands, like Pepsi, are breaking ranks and eschewing TV in favor of social media.  Cracking the TV strangle hold on the Super Bowl is an important step for social media and signals that brands now take it seriously.  This is easy to understand given all the early hype suggesting this to be the most socially engaged media event ever.

Our goal with the SM2 Buzz Bowl is to help brands understand how their advertising dollars are moving the social world.  It’s no longer enough to know how many households received your message – successful brands will recognize this and find ways to foster an emotional connect with the customer that bridges the reach of their broadcast advertising to the social community.  Building this social bond is critical because it is the fuel that prolongs and extends the reach of the original message.  That is exactly what our Social Sentiment Engagement Index (SSEI) is all about – we’ve found the voice of the customer in the din of the crowd.

So… who will carry the day on Sunday?  We’re not talking Indianapolis or New Orleans here, but the $200M hi-stakes game between the advertisers.  Will it be a social convert like Pepsi?  Maybe a big traditional spender like In-Bev?  Or even another “Rock Star” from Intel?  Either way, check with Alterian, because… we will be listening...

Watch the Super Bowl Ads with Alterian! Buzz Bowl Buzz Coachs Corner Alterian helps Agencies with Social Contact Coach

SM2 Music Video
Click the image to see the "It's SM2" music video.

Social Engagement Indicies:

Social Engagement Index (Super Bowl) Social Sentiment Engagement Index (SSEI) Super Bowl 2010


(Click on images to enlarge...)

Social Engagement Index (SEI) - The SEI is a proxy for a brand social reach and is calculated by weighting the raw number of conversations by the reach of its participants.  The raw score is then calibrated into an index.  A score of 100 is the base brand score.  Anything above this indicates a greater net reach of social conversations compared to the average brand.

Social Sentiment Engagement Index (SSEI) - The SSEI is a composite that combines measures of both engagement and sentiment.  We calculate engagement by measuring the raw number of social conversations factored upon the reach per conversation participant.  We then apply a function that accounts for the sentiment of positive and negative comments.  Finally we calibrate this into an index based upon 100 point brand score.  Anything above this indicates a greater net amount of positive engagements, while a score less than indicates more negative.  The further away from 100 a score falls the more intense the sentiment.

Social Spend Performance:

Cost Per Social Impression (Super Bowl Spend Performance)

Cost Per Social Impression (CPSM) - How much would you be willing to pay for a Tweet?  or a new fan or follower?  Clearly social media is in its infancy as a cross-channel media measurement tool, but already it's clear the social space is an excellent medium for measurement as it reflects and resonates brands spend in other channels.  In an effort to gauge how successful the brands were at converting their Super Bowl media spend to social engagement we've taken the potential reach of the conversation, using a popularity score as a multiplier, and divided it by the media spend.  In looking at a brands CPSM, the closer to $0.00 the better.

Buzz Bowl Facts:

-  Using SM2 we’ve monitored all the conversation about the Super Bowl and the brand advertisers since 12/1/2009
-  We’ve used Alterian’s Data Discovery and Visualization (DDV) tool to help analyze the SM2 data and prepare some of our targeted metrics
-  As of 2/5/2010 we have gathered over 100k conversations
-  We are actively tracking the performance of 45 brands.  In addition to TV advertisers we have targeted select competitors and brands making social waves