DC Interactive Group’s SmartMarketing Blog

This Sunday the NFL shares the spotlight almost equally with advertisers who spend as much as $3 million for 30 seconds of airtime. That’s up 11% from last year. And production costs almost have no limit. You’ll see 2.5 minutes of 3-D commercials. You’ll see big stars like Conan O’Brien and Yo-Yo Ma and Pittsburgh Steelers player Troy Polamalu. You’ll even see commercials for commercials — special ads telling viewers to stay tuned for the 3-D spots just before halftime.

The fact is that Super Bowl commercials are luxury items, especially during this economy. FedEx and GM decided to skip this year. And Miller Brewing Company, rather creatively, somehow negotiated a 1 second ad with NBC. But there appears to be an emerging trend to create Super Bowl ads that are never intended to air. I think the trend started with Go Daddy’s 2005 steamy car wash ad — which actually was intended to air but was denied (even though it was really tame). Some smart marketers are capitalizing on the Super Bowl’s self-imposed puritanical code. They’ve figured out that they can create a “controversial” ad and run it on their website — and get free press.

In this PETA (People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals) spot sexy girls get-it-on with veggies. Before we go too far, let’s be honest. PETA often gets in the way of their own messages quite a bit with a lot of boneheaded stunts. (And personally, I do enjoy a fresh salad — before my steak tartare with a fresh egg yolk on top.) However, this marketing move was smart. It speaks directly to the audience they want to reach: young high school and college students. And here’s the most intriguing part: it was done for a fraction of the cost of creating a real Super Bowl ad. Don’t think for a second that they ever expected it to be approved — I doubt PETA even has $3 million to spend on a spot.

Creating buzz around something doesn’t have to involve anything controversial — though that is the easier route. It just needs to be creative and topical enough for the press (and the public) to want to generate publicity about it. PETA could have released this ad at any time of the year, but by using the Super Bowl as a backdrop — and getting denied airtime by NBC with a perfect letter — they’ve given it more momentum. And that’s the key.

My company spends a great deal of time searching the internet for good, bad and related information about our clients in order to make sure the “right” information is in the public domain.  While bad reviews online are nothing new (and neither is backlash to them, disgruntled companies usually got nowhere when they tried to sue the forum themselves mainly because the Federal Communications Decency Act gives Web sites immunity in libel cases when the comments are posted by users.

Still, businesses can always sue users themselves, and some are starting to do so. One case making headlines here in early January was brought by Steven Biegel, a chiropractor in San Francisco, against a former patient who slammed Biegel on the review site Yelp in November 2007.

Biegel alleges in court papers that he was defamed by Christopher Norberg’s post, in which he complained about a billing dispute. According to the complaint, Norberg said in his post that he was charged more than he expected and that Biegel “couldn’t give me a straight answer as to why the jump in price.” At another point in the post, Norberg wrote that he later “found a much better, honest chiropractor.”

Offering negative opinions isn’t defamatory, but false statements of facts can be. Biegel says Norberg’s statements constitute libel because they suggest he was dishonest.

Biegel’s lawyer asked Norberg to remove the post or face suit. Norberg apparently took down the post, but then submitted a write-up about the threatened lawsuit. “Never in my life would I have imagined being taken to court for a Yelp review, especially for seeing someone for two visits that I felt were not adequate,” he wrote. He also offered to send the original post to anyone who requested it. Today, it can be seen in its entirety as an exhibit attached to Biegel’s lawsuit, posted at Norberg’s site StandForSpeech.com

It’s not clear whether a court will view Norberg’s post as actionable, but it’s certainly plausible that a judge will agree with Biegel that the post contained facts aimed at impugning his honesty. In that case, Norberg could potentially be on the hook for libel, unless he can show that the comments were true.

Certainly, Norberg seems to believe he acted in good faith — and it’s possible he will ultimately prevail. Nonetheless, in many ways, this incident highlights the risks users run when they post to review sites. Consider, if Norberg had made those identical statements to a newspaper reporter, it’s not likely that the paper would have published them without first attempting to verify them. Of course, many newspaper publishers are sophisticated about libel law and have lawyers on retainer who can assist with the hard calls.

But sites like Yelp are under no obligation to vet comments because the sites are immune from defamation suits based on users’ posts. In fact, review sites probably would go out of business if they had to decide whether to print comments in advance. Nonetheless, users themselves are still exposed — and, unlike professional publishers, those users aren’t familiar with the nuances of defamation.

The key here is that when writing reviews and posts, your information MUST be accurate.  Not only is it just right, but it’s also the law.  You will look extremely silly if your post is exposed as a fake, and the damage will be long term.  So keep it straight.

Also, do not forget to put links in your posts that lead back to your site where someone can register for updates, RSS feeds, etc.  It makes little sense to draw people in just to let them search around and leave without telling you who they are or why they’re interested in you.

According to an article by Stephanie Clifford in the New York Times, “The New York City transit system is adding a new site for advertisements: the interior of subway tunnels.

Starting next spring with the 42nd Street-Times Square shuttle, passengers will see advertising outside the windows as the train travels between stations. The messages will look rather like jumpy 15-second TV ads.

The tunnel advertising is part of an ambitious Metropolitan Transportation Authority plan to convert much of its real estate into advertising space. In addition to the tunnel ads, it will sell space on turnstiles, digital screens inside stations, projections against subway station walls, and panels on the outside of subway cars.

Advertisers are eager for any new way to capture consumers’ attention. The History Channel, which started to advertise on subway panels this month, wanted to get “buzz not only with viewers and consumers of our content, but buzz within the advertising community and buzz with key business partner influentials in this market,” said Chris Moseley, senior vice president for marketing at the channel.

And the authority wants revenue to help it cover its projected $900 million budget shortfall next year.

“In light of the fiscal difficulties that the M.T.A.’s facing, we have set out to basically look under every rock for ways that we can cut costs and raise revenue,” said Jeremy Soffin, a spokesman for the authority.

But some groups say the extension of advertising space is troubling.

“The subways are not a wholly noncommercial site already,” said Robert Weissman, managing director of Commercial Alert, a nonprofit advocacy group in Washington. “But there’s a big difference between signage and traditional billboards, and the new digital media and turnstile wraps and other innovations.”

Mr. Weissman added, “It just contributes to the overwhelming assault on people and their everyday lives that makes it increasingly challenging to escape commercial messaging.”

While the authority has long sold panels in the trains and billboards at the stations to advertisers, it began converting other parts of stations into advertising space only about a decade ago.

CBS Outdoor, which handles ad space in the stations, began selling entire stations to advertisers about 10 years ago, letting them wrap poles and put graphics on the floors.

More recently, it has offered stairs and the full interior of trains to advertisers for a technique known as a “wrap.”

And this year, it is getting even more creative.

“Advertisers, especially in this environment, are looking to do something different and be noticed,” said Jodi Senese, the executive vice president for marketing for CBS Outdoor. “When something is new, clearly there’s an opportunity to make a big splash,” she said.

This week, the company began testing advertising on a large display, almost the size of a movie screen, mounted above a passageway by the 7 train in Times Square.

Because the New York subway runs 24 hours a day, it is difficult to put ads on the far side of subway tracks. Consequently, CBS is considering projecting images across the track. They will be similar to ads that are projected onto station walls, which CBS began about two years ago. There is a projection ad for Asics in Union Square, in the passageway between the N, Q, R and W lines and the Lexington Avenue line, and one for the Navy at Grand Central, in the corridor to the shuttle.

Both the arms of turnstiles and the entire turnstile structures are available to advertisers.

And starting in 2009, CBS will sell advertisers exterior panels — thinner versions of the horizontal advertisements that buses carry — on the 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7 and shuttle trains. These panels are already in place on some 1, 3, 4, 7 and shuttle trains, where the History Channel is the first advertiser to use them. It is promoting its “Cities of the Underworld” series.

The History Channel, owned by A&E Television Networks, also covered the exterior of the Times Square shuttle with advertising, which the transportation authority is considering allowing for other advertisers.

The channel’s media agency, Horizon Media, worked with CBS to persuade the transportation authority to allow the panels and exterior wrap, even creating a miniature model of the shuttle to show authority officials how it would look.

“We’re not just marketing the show in a traditional way, we’re creating an immersive kind of experience,” Ms. Moseley said. The tunnel ads are scheduled to be installed by spring 2009, and will be handled by SideTrack Technologies, a company in Winnipeg, Manitoba. It lines subway tunnels with strips of light-emitting diodes that are window height.

“We have a way of projecting multiple images on the side of a tunnel wall as a train moves from one station to the next station,” said Rob Walker, the president of SideTrack. The company shows about 360 images over a 15-second period and times the display of the images to the speed of a given train.

Mr. Walker compared it to a children’s flip book, where static images in rapid succession give the impression of movement.

“It’s just basic animation, but we can manipulate the images, we can change the ads, so every train that goes by can see a different ad,” he said.

The windows light up as if there were a television screen outside the window. SideTrack installed the system in the Los Angeles and London subways this year, and retailers including Target, Microsoft and Warner Brothers have used it.

An earlier version of the system, which uses printed panels instead of L.E.D. projections, is being used in Boston and San Francisco. Those require that workers go into the tunnels to put up the panels, which makes the ads difficult to install and change.

It will probably cost around $95,000 for a full month of ads in a tunnel, Mr. Walker said, but said that advertisers could book the system for short-term projects.

Mr. Koenigsberg of Horizon said that a prime outdoor billboard usually costs six figures, “so that kind of number doesn’t sound out of whack.”

He said he was interested in the tunnel advertising technology, but would want to ensure that subway riders wanted to see moving ads during their rides.

“The last thing you want to do is have inefficient waste in putting a message in front of someone where they’re not receptive to it,” he said.”