My Super Proposal - Super Bowl Commercial Proposal Update

It's been awhile since my plea to help promote 'J.P.' in his quest for a 30 second commercial spot during next February's Super Bowl game in order to propose to his girlfriend so its time for a long overdue update.

The response has been tremendous.

The intial blogosphere bang was first launched by Danny, Lee, David, Jeremy, Liane and many more and followed up by a press release by Greg Jarboe of SEO-PR. Although we had some initial coverage before my involvement, the combined efforts led to the 'tipping point' - an article written by Abbey Klaassen of AdAge Magazine. The AdAge article led to a flurry of coverage from radio, print and tv inquiries and also a lot of inquiries from potential sponsors and advertisers including 7 diamond ring retailers or manufacturers!

To sum all of the exposure up, here is a list of media and press that has happened to date:

Radio Interviews and Coverage:

Radio Station in Virginia (prior to my involvement - no call station info)
Radio Station in California (prior to my involvement)
107.5 The River, radio station in Nashville
710 KIRO Newsradio The Ron & Don Show, Seattle.
KKND - New Orleans
STAR 94 Radio in Atlanta
Saint Louis morning drive time talk show
Ken and Tammy Show on WOXL in Asheville NC
WRMF South Florida
Howard Stern Show
Daily Search Cast
94.3 FOX Northern Michagan
KROQ Los Angeles Kevin and Bean show

Newpaper and Online Media Coverage:

AdRants
AdJab
AdAge
AdAge Garfield: The Blog
New York Post
Netscape
Media Buyer Planner
MediaPost
MarketingProfs Daily Fix
Entrepreneur.com Blog
Business 2.0 Blog
Corpus Christi Caller-Times
ABC News / ESPN Sports
ESPN - The Magazine
Chicago Tribune
ABC News - GMA

International Media Coverage:

Sweden
Denmark
Norway
Mexico
Spain

Television Coverage:

Fox News (National - on a Sunday afternoon)
MSNBC (Tomorrow morning 7:30 a.m. PST)
Good Morning America (multiple video segment starting next week)

We've also had inquiries but haven't done interviews with NPR Radio, USA Today, Inside Edition, Rocky Mountain News and a few others.

My initial goal was to show Madison Avenue how a few bloggers could help to get the word out and hopefully give this project some legs. I'm now getting emails from people outside of my industry who've learned of my involvement and are sending well wishes and in several instances in conversations, emails or in forums when the project is brought up - the response is "Oh, I heard about that". If anything, we've already succeeded with our goal, to yell loud enough in the blogosphere to make Madison Avenue take note and to raise a substantial amount of money for the Vanderbilt Children's Hospital.

Our next goal of course is to actually get 'J.P' his moment on the largest Nationally televised sports show in history with an audience hoping to beat last year's 90.7 MM viewers. As Bob Garfield from AdAge Magazine puts it:

"Everybody and his brother thinks their Super Bowl ad is an event within an event. Every year, almost all of them are wrong. Super Bowl ads are mainly just overproduced comedy blackouts without much of a selling point. But a marriage proposal -- followed (somehow) by an answer -- is real drama, especially if the answer is "no." It's worth the money for the publicity alone, but just imagine the traffic to a properly designed website. "

Now knowing the proposer and proposee I can almost assuredly say that her response will be "YES!" and with that brings up another goal. This year, the NFL is on a push to increase viewership of the Superbowl and the demographic where they see the biggest increase is in female viewership. NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell recently stated:

"It's a very big initiative," he said. "(Women) fans want to be treated as real fans because they love the game, understand the game and want to have the opportunity to experience the game just as anyone else does."

While women comprise about 40 percent of the U.S. television audience for the Super Bowl, media watchers note the broadcasts fail to address them.

Commercials during the game, the most expensive television advertising event of the year in the U.S., are dominated by beer, cars and electronics."

Andrea Learned, The co-author of Don't Think Pink: What Really Makes Women Buy – And How To Increase Your Share of this Crucial Market recently wrote in her blog:

" So this is my marketing to women nudge for the cause: For those brands interested in gaining the attention of the women who watch the Superbowl as well as the men, consider these reasons:

• You will be connecting people to one another around your brand. (You sponsor it, and consumers will make note of who aligned with this intriguing event.)
• You will be presenting an emotion-filled event with which lots of Superbowl watchers - and many of your consumers - can relate.
• You will offer something very different in a "same-old" saturated several hour timeframe that is all the more likely to catch viewers off guard, and keep them from running to the kitchen for the chips.

So what are you waiting for?!"

Exactly Andrea - and combine this viewpoint with what MediaBuyerPlanner calls a "Rare Opportunity for Sponsorship", the potential that this yields for anticipation of the event and also with the ever frustrating problem of offline to online brand integration. We've kept the identity of 'J.P.' a secret for multiple reasons, primarily to keep his girlfriend from finding out and spoiling the surprise but also, to add to the mystique of the project.

Now imagine this - What if every girl in America who is involved in a serious relationship is aware that a proposal is taking place? What if the intrigue that we generate can keep her watching the game, well into the 4th quarter sitting on the edge of her seat, breathlessly anticipating and wondering if it's her? Then when the proposal airs and our bachelor has made his heartfelt plea, the commercial finishes with a "find out if she says YES...go to www.adsponsor.com/proposal" Can you now imagine the branding opportunity of taking users from offline to online - all with measurable statistics?

Combined with all of that emotion, we can also add the following benefits for a major sponsor to take up in their initiative:

• ROI for an advertiser; with massive media coverage of their ad and the proposal in addition to the Superbowl and the response video (far greater than any normal commercial) ROI could be greater than a 'normal' Superbowl ad.
  
• Direct measurement of traffic via the web; links from MySuperProposal.com and from a video site (hosting the response video) will show the advertiser the direct page views and unique visits. You can't get that with normal TV ads.
• Branding that lasts a long, long time; it will still be a video people watch and still talk about in six months. Most likely, press would continue after the proposal up to, including and after the wedding (Good Morning America has already expressed an interest in interviewing the couple the following day in New York).
  

Well that just about covers my request for additional sponsors now. ;) My feed subscribers will probably get this in time to note that we will be on MSNBC at 10:30 a.m. Eastern tomorrow January 6th. I will continue to keep you up to date as to our progress, I figure we've got a couple of weeks to go in our efforts so wish us luck. I'd also like to thank all of my fellow bloggers and search buddies who helped us out in numerous ways with links, blog posts, emails and verbal mentions - without you we wouldn't have made it this far!