This was supposed to be the most social media Super Bowl ever! So was it? Yes, there were #hashtags on tons of ads, Shazam being utilized by many major corporations, and people commenting on Facebook but did it all connect with customers? Were customers more likely to buy the products being advertised because of it? Coming from someone who has taught it, trained and advocated it for years now. I am not so sure.

One of the first things that I taught in my MBA course is that social media is not SPAM! It is about conversation. Too many companies are view social media as being a means to get their message out to as many people as possible. Toyota was a horrible offender of this during this year’s Super Bowl spamming anyone they could on Twitter. Nothing turns off the audience than being forced a marketing message and it was even worse that they did it from verified Twitter accounts which turned people off of Twitter as well.

Shazam has been popping up in more and more commercials. If you don’t know, it is that little blue “S” logo that seems randomly placed in the ad. This means that you can open an app on your smartphone and it will listen to the ad which then drives you to do something else. American Family insurance wanted to enter you into their contest when you used the app. Budweiser gave away a free LMFAO track if you used it during the Half Time Show. I tried it several times but found that unless I already had the app open and ready to go, a 30 second spot was simply too short to open it and have it listen effectively. By far it was much more effective than GoDaddy’s use of a QR Code. While most people can pause live TV with their DVR, I just don’t see myself or many others running up to my TV to scan the code (and I am one who scans QR codes daily).

Overall, I was very disappointed at the social media conversation. When I made the comment on Twitter that it felt very one-sided and not much actual conversation going on. @Marclstook responded:

I thought it summed it up perfectly. Everyone wanted to voice their opinion but not many wanted to listen. I really hope that this is not where social media is headed.

Recently, I came across the latest version of the Social Media Revolution on YouTube.  It is full of statistics of why Social Media is not simply a fad that will simply fad away in the near future.  I have often said that Social Media is fundamentally changing traditional marketing.  Historically, companies told consumers what to think about their brand.  Social Media has transformed that relationship into a two-way communication where companies not only tell consumers what to think but consumers respond in real-time with what they really think.  It truly is changing the the way we communicate.