Author: Dylan

Super Bowl good for advertisers, great for social media, Twitter, Shazam

What a #SuperBowl Sunday night! The game between the #Giants and the #Patriots came down to the wire (not the one that Richard Simmons-esque character was bouncing on during the #Madonna halftime performance). I couldn’t think of a #betterway to end the football season than watching Eli and the G-men go with #whatworks as they vanquished Brady and New England (#SoLongVampires). To #makeitplatinum, the coin toss earned me some #freepapajohns before the hours upon hours of commercial messages turned my brain to #mushymush.

(Also, Jack in the Box went with #marrybacon. Don’t know how you fit that one into conversation, but it was an interesting strategy nevertheless.)

Worth the price of admission

We know the Super Bowl is all about marketing your brand. A 30-second spot this year went for $3.5 million. General Motors spent $28 million on 4 minutes worth of advertising for their Chevy line alone (plus whatever it cost to sponsor the game’s MVP award and the hashtag #superbowl on Twitter).

I’m of the inclination that the return is worth the investment. No other event attracts such a large audience among all of the major purchasing demographics. The cost per thousand viewers (CPM) for the 2011 Super Bowl was $27. A successful primetime drama or sitcom will charge near, or many times, north of that figure. Other special events, like award shows, often demand an even greater CPM.

Plus – and this is a major plus – what other event do audiences watch for the advertisements? News and entertainment programs leading up to and following Super Bowl Sunday will spend hours of additional airtime reairing the ads for comment at no charge. Not to mention the Super Bowl ad galleries that are featured prominently Monday on YouTube, Hulu – even the Google homepage. That’s why it’s not surprising – to me, at least – to see Forbes claiming that networks with broadcasting rights could easily fill the 70 available commercial slots at double the current rate. Yes, that’s $7 million for 30 seconds of celebrity cameo or cute animal stunts.

But that’s not the point of today’s post. That stuff happens every year. What was new – at least on a large scale – was the incorporation of social networking into the Super Bowl spots – particularly Twitter and Shazam.

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How Google (and maybe Wikipedia) won the anti-SOPA/PIPA campaign for the Internet

I tend to check at least one Wikipedia page per blog post. It’s a simple way to double-check the little pieces of information that make a post come together.

I use Google more times a day than I’d ever care to count.

Today, two of the most-visited sites on the Internet have gone black – one symbolically, the other quite literally – in the most publicized opposition to date of anti-piracy legislation SOPA and PIPA.

A visit to any English-language Wikipedia page today was met with a rapid redirect to a black screen with a brief paragraph not-so-subtly suggesting that your favorite open-source encyclopedia could one day be blocked by some overzealous federal button masher:

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Crime Scene: A lesson in reporting & interviewing (w/ fake blood!)

A gruesome murder has occurred on the SAU campus – the fifth on an area campus in as many weeks. But for the first time, the killer has slipped, leaving clues behind…

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Crime Scene is a collaborative project between the Theatre and Mass Communication students within the department. Students in my Reporting and Writing course attempt to uncover details of the apparent murder and develop a news story capturing the facts of the case so far.

It’s their favorite day of the semester. Mine, too.

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Steve Jobs, 1955-2011: The Creator of the Apple Culture

Steve Jobs died today. Pancreatic cancer. 56.

He stepped down as CEO of Apple, the once-thriving, then-fledgling, then-thriving-beyond-the-wildest-dreams-of-any-tech-company-in-history, little more than one month ago. We knew it was his health. We still didn’t think it would be this soon.

The Internet is reeling tonight. Twitter crashed. Every site you visit seems to have some sort of memorial. Apple’s site displays only the image above.

We lost a visionary, without a doubt. One of the great minds of our times.

For Apple-ites, it’s more. Today, they lost the leader of a subculture.

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Diary of a Fantasy Baseball Geek

The rest of the world was watching masses of humanity crash into each other again and again in an attempt to advance an oblong ball. The crowds cheered as the players fell, like spectators at the Roman Coliseum.

Not I.

On Sunday, I watched a purer game – one of sandlot dreams and the fabric of Americana. The pastime from a simpler time. The one where guys spit and grab their crotch all the time.

Ah, baseball.

In the waning weeks of September, most of the pennant races have been decided. Bright-eyed prospects are fulfilling a lifelong dream of playing with the big league club while cagey veterans are resting up for the promise of October magic.

But for a small group, these final few weeks of September are paramount. They are the final challenge of a six-month test of strategy, skill, and sheer determination of will.

We are fantasy baseball geeks, and these are our playoffs.

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