Each year, I write a piece for Mobile Marketer on the use - or lack of use -- of mobile in the Super Bowl telecast.

My new byline follows:

“Please - ad with mobile call to action leading to millions joining database. #superbowl #brandbowl”—Tweet from the author, sometime late in the first half of Super Bowl XLVI

For each of the past three years, I have played Monday-morning quarterback with a day-after column for Mobile Marketer looking at mobile elements of Super Bowl ads. 

Despite a huge, captive audience that actually eagerly anticipates these commercials, for mobile marketers, the overarching theme has been “missed opportunities.”

But going into Sunday’s Patriots-Giants tilt, 2012 looked to be the year that Super Bowl viewing went from passive to active:

• Nearly 60 percent of mobile users planned to look at or use their phones or tablets during this year’s Super Bowl, according to a survey from Harris Interactive

• Chevrolet launched a tablet and smartphone application designed to run throughout the game and add interactivity to their ads

• Rumors were flying that more than half of the Super Bowl ads would be Shazamable—which is apparently now a word, “the ability to be identified using the ‘Shazam’ mobile app,” syn. “Shazam-enabled”)

• A more informal bellwether—on Twitter, a colleague predicted the over-under on mobile calls-to-action would be 10

Despite the optimism, just as the New York Giants once again delivered disappointment to Patriot Nation, once again mobile marketers were left feeling a little empty at the end of Super Bowl XXVI. Another year of “anticipointment,” perhaps.

Yes, there were more calls-to-action than ever before – particularly hashtags, which debuted in Audi’s 2011 Super Bowl Spot.

This year, by my count, nearly half the ads included a hashtag – some relevant, many fanciful (Audi’s #solongvampires, JetBlue’s meta humor #hashtagoverload).

I also counted more than a dozen spots featuring “Shazam” – which was useful for engaging customers if they have a smartphone, if they have Shazam downloaded , if they are sitting close enough to the TV, if have the Shazam application open and if they see the small call-to-action on the screen. There’s a lot of if’s there.

Most ads also featured suggestions for viewers to visit Web sites or Facebook pages, too.

Each of these calls-to-action were designed to drive a consumer to interact with a brand—with limitations.

Twitter hashtags and Facebook pages allow them to comment on a specific ad spot or maybe even a brand, but in a one-to-many sort of way. 

Shazam is hampered by the requirements I mentioned above, and even if those are overcome, still require the user to click through from the app to a landing page. And Web sites, well, that would have been cutting edge during the dotcom-heavy Super Bowl of 2000 … maybe.

None of these calls-to-action provided marketers with a key element—an easy means to create and continue a one-on-one conversation between brand and customer, with highly relevant content delivered on their most personal device.

By my count, there were two advertisers who used mobile to create a conversation—with mixed results: the NFL (SMS) and GoDaddy (QR code):

• The NFL’s spots had all the ingredients of a great ad—humor, the chance to win big prizes, and an SMS-based “call to action”—but failed miserably on the execution. I texted in during the first half—and heard nothing back … for more than five hours. Calls-to-action are about the instant gratification of a response, not a text back in the middle of the night.

• GoDaddy included a QR code on the latest in its series of ads to encourage viewers to visit their site for their latest series of racy “too hot for TV” advertisements. Theoretically, a great idea and a good way to capture customers who opt in – if consumers just happen to have their QR scanner fired up and aimed at the TV set during the seconds it appeared on screen.

Just like the past few years, there were so many missed opportunities.

Fiat’s ad had all the ingredients of a great spot: innuendo, twists and a fast car. But it could have built a database of opted-in potential customers willing to exchange their information for access to a longer director’s cut of the ad.

Budweiser’s Facebook call-to-action for aiding rescue dogs was a nice touch for a worthy cause—but an SMS prompt for interested participants to opt-in could have benefited beer sales and animals alike.

As far as my colleague’s prediction on 10 mobile calls to action? Bet the under. For mobile marketers, it was another year of anticipointment.

Like Tom Brady’s heave to the end zone on the game’s final play, my plea for an ad with a mobile call-to-action leading to millions to opt into a marketer’s database came up empty.

MediaPost's Steve Smith asked me what I thought about the mobile components in the Super Bowl spots.

From his article:

"Short-code callouts were few, as many marketers seemed to understand that it is difficult for the fleeting mention of a six-digit number and keyword to register with viewers. Yet a spot advertising the NFL Fantasy game and a $1 million sweepstakes entry had a persistent call to action on screen: send “NFL” to 69635. Unfortunately, as several mobile executives noted, NFL did not respond quickly in acknowledging the entry. In fact, it took hours for our entry to get a 2 a.m reply.  Likewise for Jeff Hasen, CMO of Hipcricket, who told us: 'That's unforgivable when viewers are looking for instant gratification.'

"In our spot check among mobile marketing execs paying close attention to the use of the platform this year, most were underwhelmed. Annual mobile Bowl-watcher Hasen says that while marketers didn’t ignore mobile this year, as they have in the past, the execution was uncertain. Audio ID app Shazam allows users to tag about half of the Super Bowl ads, but Hasen says 'how many knew enough to use Shazam remains a question. With about half the ads including the Shazam prompt, no one spot stood out for including it.' He concludes that despite the hashtags and second-screen schemes, 'my takeaway is one of anticipointment.'”

Read more: http://www.mediapost.com/publications/article/167247/anticipointment-mobile-e...

Final questions on my mind in the hours before the Super Bowl telecast:

With reportedly half of the Super Bowl spots including a Shazam call to action, will it be advantageous to have a later ad once the concept is discovered by viewers?

Conversely, will advertisers with later appearances suffer from Shazam fatigue?

How will brand managers judge the results of ads that include a mobile component?

How much activity needs to come from the more than 100 million viewers for mobile to be deemed successful?

Will more use the mobile web or mobile apps?

Will an advertiser unveil a call to action that leads to an opt-in database?

Will mobile finally break through this telecast or will it be another year of anticipointment?

We'll finally have some answers later today.

Andrew Berg from Wireless Week talked to me about mobile and the Super Bowl telecast.

From his story that ran today:

While you'd be forgiven for thinking that football is the name of the game on Super Bowl Sunday, you'd also be wrong. It's actually advertising. Advertisers will pay almost $3.5 million for a 30 second spot during their year's big game. Is it worth it? That's debatable. But consider that last year's game saw $10.2 billion dollars in consumer spend, according to research from iProspect. For some comparison, Cyber Monday drove $1.25 billion in consumer spend last year.

While it's taken some time to integrate mobile with those flashy Super Bowl ads, every year more advertisers supplement their pricey air time with short codes and calls to action. Admittedly, success for mobile has varied, but there's no denying that viewers have their devices on them during the game. iProspect discovered that 85 percent of search queries during Super Bowl XVLV came from mobile, and Super Bowl searches increased 122 percent from 2009 to 2010 and additional 33 percent increase from 2010 to 2011.

Jeff Hasen, chief marketing officer for Hipcricket, is upbeat in his expectations for mobile during this year's Super Bowl.

"I think we're likely to look back and say that this was the year that Super Bowl viewing went from being passive to being interactive," Hasen said, adding that it should have happened years ago.

Hasen comes to the Super Bowl with a cautious optimism, which is then tempered with a gentle bit of skepticism. He'll be looking for the effectiveness of the mobile campaigns, which he says need to be designed with one key fact in mind: It's a party.

For instance, Hasen has heard that over half of the TV spots during the game will be "Shazamable," meaning there will be a call to action for viewers to use their phones to "Shazam" an ad and get additional content or offers. "That's a good thing because you're interacting with consumers," Hasen says (this is the cautious optimism), "but I do have some questions about whether that's the right environment to do Shazam." You can guess that the last bit is the gentle skepticism.

Hasen says in the past, advertisers have been reluctant to include calls to action during the party atmosphere of a Super Bowl. Who wants to grab their phone and dial a short code or Shazam something, while they're dashing back and forth between the TV, the bathroom and the snack table?

It's not that calls to action can't be successful, it's just a matter of when, and Hasen hopes it's this year. "We've got a lot of buildup and a lot of buzz that this is going to be the year of mobile with the Super Bowl, and I just want to it to be the year that it succeeds, where mobile proves to those who might not be believers that it really is the right way to go."

The ways that a company can integrate mobile with their traditional TV spots are growing. GoDaddy will feature a QR code in their steamy new Super Bowl ad (preview below) that will take viewers to another version of the spot on their mobiles. And yet, Hasen says traditional SMS and short codes remain among the most effective ways to use mobile as a compliment to other channels.

"With a QR code, you might have a lot of people that don't have the right scanner. We're big believers at Hipcricket of giving people multiple ways to engage," Hasen said, "so you might give them an SMS, a QR, or you might drive them to a mobile website."

Mobile Marketer asked me about Tylenol's use of QR codes to educate about responsible dosage.

Here's what I told the publication:

"Consumers often enter stores considering a product, then decide in the aisle after they look at price, possible alternatives, and information available.

"Successful brands are making it easier for customers to make choices. Having bar codes at the shelf is often a good way to go, especially if they are within a broad mobile offering that gives shoppers the ability to act on their terms. 

"Some will engage via scan, while others will look to get smarter through mobile web, SMS, or an app, for instance."

Tylenol does have an SMS call to action for those who want to interact that way.

The next time you consider wasting a few minutes bursting bubbles through a smartphone application, please stop and think of doing something more meaningful.

More significant than playing a game? Yes, there actually are ways to use your mobile device for good.

Here’s one:

Donate to the charity of your choice via wireless device. You would not be alone.

According to the Pew Research Center’s Internet & American Life Project and Harvard’s Berkman Center for the Internet & Society, charitable donations from mobile phones have grown more common in recent years. Two thirds (64 percent) of American adults now use text messaging, and 9 percent have texted a charitable donation from their mobile phone.

In what Pew calls the first-ever, in-depth study on mobile donors—which analyzed the “Text to Haiti” campaign after the 2010 earthquake—findings show that these contributions were often spur-of-the-moment decisions that spread virally through friend networks.

Spur-of-the-moment as in pushing aside the bubble burster app for just a couple of minutes.

According to Pew, three quarters of these donors (73 percent) contributed using their phones on the same day they heard about the campaign, and a similar number (76  percent) say that they typically make text message donations without conducting much in-depth research beforehand.

Yet while their initial contribution often involved little deliberation, 43 percent of these donors encouraged their friends or family members to give to the campaign as well. In addition, a majority of those surveyed (56 percent) have continued to give to more recent disaster relief efforts—such as the March 2011 earthquake and tsunami in Japan—using their mobile phones.

Pew said that three-quarters (74%) of Haiti text donors in this survey were first time mobile givers, meaning that their contribution to earthquake relief was the first time they had used the text messaging function on their phone to make a charitable contribution. Overall, 80 percent of the mobile givers donated to the earthquake recovery efforts using only their cell phones—and not using any other methods such as online contributions or in-person donations.

Pew said that the mobile phone is bringing in younger donors. Also, the organization said that those giving this way are more racially and ethnically diverse when compared with those who contribute through more traditional means.

How does mobile giving work?

Through such organizations at the Mobile Giving Foundation and mGive, mobile subscribers respond to calls to action in media and online by texting into a charity or non-profit’s short code. A donation, usually in the denomination of $5 or $10, is included on the consumer’s bill sent monthly by the carrier of choice. A full 100 percent of the donation is passed to the charitable recipient within 30 days.

Some of the many current opportunities to give:

Text “GIVE” to 777444 to donate $10 to the USAID.GOV-sponsored famine relief effort in the horn of Africa, benefiting American Refugee Committee, CARE, Catholic Relief Services, Mercy Corps, Save the Children, UNICEF USA, World Food Program USA, and World Vision. General Mills has agreed to match the first 2,000 text donations that come through this campaign, up to $20,000.

Text “HOPE” TO 20222 to give $5 to the American Cancer Society.

Text “DARFUR” to 40579 to give $5 to the Save Darfur Coalition.

(Article first published as Mobile Does Good Through Charitable Giving on Technorati.)

In Mobile Marketer's new guide for Mobile Advertising, I wrote about the importance of giving consumers choice about how to interact with you via mobile. The article follows:

CTIA reports that mobile phone penetration in the United States is greater than 96 percent with more than 300 million current wireless subscribers, 72.5 million of which are using
smartphones (comScore).

Now let us consider the large number of operating systems – iOS, Android, Microsoft’s Mango, BlackBerry – and the ever-increasing different devices in use.

Savvy brands understand that we are each individuals when it comes to our mobile devices. Leading brands such as Macy’s, MillerCoors and Ford understand this concept, and provide multiple options for mobile engagement.

This has led to a number of successful mobile marketing and advertising programs.

In spring 2011, Macy’s launched its Backstage Pass program, which engages shoppers in-store via multiple calls to action to use a mobile device.

Recognizing that not all its shoppers have QR code readers, the iconic department store added a short code to in-store signage, giving consumers a choice and ensuring that no one is left out.

When the QR code is scanned, or the short code is texted shoppers are forwarded to a backstage look at a video from the designer of their choice including Kenneth Cole, Sean “Diddy” Combs, Tommy Hilfiger, Michael Kors, Rachel Roy, Jessica Simpson and Martha Stewart.

The videos offer design suggestions, style tips and more. Shoppers can even enter a sweepstakes to win Macy’s gift cards.

The program has gained wide acclaim and interaction, sparking Macy’s to implement a second video series for the fall shopping season.

MillerCoors, the second largest beer company in America, recognizes that beer and sports go hand in hand.

The company designated nearly 75 percent of its ad spend to sporting events in 2010.

However, MillerCoors recognizes that there is a substantial opportunity to take these advertisements to the next level. By adding a mobile element to its advertisements, MillerCoors is able to connect with customers and build lasting relationships.

MillerCoors tapped Hipcricket to run a cross-media marketing campaign, leveraging traditional mobile elements, to help increase awareness of the Coors Light brand during Super Bowl XLV and the Miller Lite brand during the 2011 NCAA tournament.These campaigns included QR codes, mobile Web sites, SMS and contesting.

The campaigns resulted in over 159,000 interactions from 86,000 mobile participants and over 60 percent of which fell into one of MillerCoors’ key demographics – the 21-34 age range.

FordDirect, a joint venture between Ford Motor Co. and its dealers, implemented its first mobile program in 2010.

The brand’s goal was to include mobile calls to action in its national print, radio and TV advertisements to give potential customers an opportunity to interact with the car brand on a personal level.

The first phase of FordDirect’s program included adding short codes to its national ads for the Ford Year End event.

The car company was able to generate more than 1,000 leads across 38 regional dealer groups and achieve a 12.5 percent conversion rate.

In 2011, Ford is projected to spend $1.3 billion on advertising, primarily targeted at creating leads that turn into sales.

As part of that effort, FordDirect has now expanded its mobile marketing program to include all of its print and TV advertisements. The program has achieved a 15.4 percent lead conversion rate.

The success of these programs has led to an expanded program which includes QR codes among other mobile channels.

With a myriad of ways for people to consume mobile content on a host of mobile devices, why should a brand’s mobile playbook only have one play?

Adotas asked me to write about mobile's prospects in 2012.

I hit on several topics:

• Learn lessons from 2011
• Think beyond the click
• Converge your social and mobile efforts
• Find a vendor with protected technology that will keep you safe

The piece is here http://www.adotas.com/2011/12/2012-forecast-mobile-marketing/

My Super Bowl mobile predictions have been anything but super so I’ll steer clear of forecasting the arrival of mobile calls to action in TV spots in February.

Instead, here are my 2012 predictions for other areas of mobile:

Device price points will continue to be brought down with offers of discounted products in exchange for a consumer agreeing to receive ads. Mobile phones with offers, including perhaps a Google phone, are coming soon.

Savvy marketers will follow research highlighting consumer behavior and interest. They know that just because you can do something technically doesn’t mean that you should. Know your customers and prospects and market to them in ways that you have the best chance of success. One major global brand allocates approximately 70 percent of its mobile efforts to ‘reach efforts’ that include SMS, 20 percent to richer experiences that don’t reach all subscribers, and 10 percent to the shiny object. That is a great example to follow.

2012 will be the year of the mobile web. As we move closer to the time when more people access the web on a wireless device than a PC, brands, agencies and others will realize that they need a mobile web offering that overdelivers. This has not yet happened, but will soon because consumers will demand it.

In such a growth industry, more vendors will enter the marketplace making claims that they will produce ROI. Proceed with caution. While the company name may not say Two Guys In a Garage, that may indeed be what you are buying.

Expect more pressure from senior management to produce results from mobile, meaning it’s critical to think beyond a one-time transaction. There are bigger opportunities if you think about what can happen after the click, namely an experience that can lead to an opt-in and remarketing possibilities.

Plan on more device types in the hands of consumers, making it important to provide positive user experiences rather than products that addresses the least-common denominator. Consumers expect top notch brand experiences and the bar is higher than ever with smartphones and faster networks.

Expect more social interaction at the point of sale, making customer service vital or a bad experience will end up on Facebook or Twitter in seconds. According to my Moments of Trust consumer touchpoint survey, 40 percent of consumers with smartphones or Internet-enabled mobile devices have used them to spread word to their social networks about an in-store experience, 46 percent of them reported a positive one and 40 percent cited a negative one.

We will see patent infringements being identified and enforced, making it imperative to work with a company that has protected IP and can keep you out of trouble. Rather than experiencing a problem later, it’s critical to determine if a vendor has proprietary technology or is working off something that could be challenged in court.

Others will chase voice as the killer app but may not deliver due to issues of ambient noise and poor search results.

Successful mobile campaigns will have prominent calls to action and provide multiple ways to engage. Much like Macy’s does with its Backstage Pass program, brands should consider using an SMS call to action and QR code on print advertising campaign pointing to a mobile website that can capture customer’s information.  This engages the consumer and introduces a concept of immediacy. Consumers are looking for interactivity in what used to be passive situations.

(article first appeared on imediaconnection.com http://blogs.imediaconnection.com/blog/2011/12/13/super-if-not-super-bowl-mob...