The Green Bay Packers’ 31-25 victory over the Pittsburgh Steelers in Texas drew a U.S. TV audience of 111 million, topping the 2010 final tally by almost 5 million, according to data released on Monday by broadcaster Fox.

“The airing of Super Bowl XLV goes down as Fox’s most-watched night of prime time ever, as well as Fox’s highest-rated night ever among Adults 18-49. It’s also the most-watched night on any network in at least 20 years,” Fox said in a statement.

Last year, 106.5 million watched the New Orleans Saints beat the Indianapolis Colts, surpassing the 106 million who tuned in for the finale of the comedy “M*A*S*H” in 1983.

The Super Bowl in 2009 drew 98.7 million viewers, and the audience in 2008 was 97.5 million.

And it didn’t stop with game day. Over 31 Million people have watched little Darth Vader use his powers to start a Volkswagen on YouTube, and 30 other advertisers actually premiered their much anticipated commercials online in advance of the Super Bowl.

Some other corresponding and interesting stats include:

• Harris Interactive Study. 25% of women exclusively watch for commercials. 12% of men.
• Per Clearspring: Posts mentioning Pepsi Max increased by 3,000% followed by Super 8, and Carmax. Chrysler also experienced a 1300% increase in searches for the brand name followed by Pepsi Max at 950% and Chatter.com at 900%.
• VW’s the Force was the most talked about ad on Twitter. 1 million views in 24 hours before Super Bowl even aired. Increased FB fans to the VW page by 20,000.
• Bud Light spent 1.2 billion for Super Bowl naming rights + ad time (the biggest investment of any brand).

Yes $3 Million is a fortune for a spot, but one could argue the reach extended via social media helps make that number a little more digestible.

Pepsi, FedEx and GM have all pulled out from Super Bowl commercials this year, while brands like Doritos hope to repeat the success of their Crash the Super Bowl campaign.  At the 2010 Winter Olympics, Visa, one of the event’s largest sponsors for more than twenty years, is expanding their advertising to a multi-platform strategy with a heavy digital focus.  Sony Ericsson, the official mobile sponsor of the 2010 World Cup, has forgone all traditional advertising in favor of a fan-centric approach that reaches out through online channels.  If 2009 was the year that big companies began embracing social media, then 2010 looks like the year that they will be getting engaged in social matrimony.

As the official soft drink of the NFL, Pepsi made a drastic and progressive decision to forgo all Super Bowl television commercials in favor of their $20 million Pepsi Refresh Project digital advertising campaign.  After voting on the site goes live on February 1, the project will give grant money to the winners with the best ideas to “refresh” their community.  This marks the first time a major NFL sponsor will not be airing commercials during the Super Bowl.  Even in a deflated market, 30-second Super Bowl spots are selling for $2.5 million to $2.7 million, making the reach and measurability of digital word-of-mouth strategies that much more appealing.

Just days after the Super Bowl winner is crowned, the opening ceremonies of the 2010 Winter Olympic Games will commence.  This year, major sponsors like Visa have developed campaigns that encompass a variety of digital channels.  They will be utilizing microsites to showcase interviews and personal stories of athletes, along with downloadable athlete widgets and posts on social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter.

From a news media perspective, Web 2.0 and social tools have allowed nearly anyone to become a “reporter.”  For that reason, the IOC has created a rule that only accredited media members may act as journalists with rights to publish audio and moving pictures from the games.  There will apparently be a few exceptions to this rule though as the Vancouver Organizing Committee launched a competition for area students to become a reporter during the games.  Using social media tools like videos, web invites, blog posts and photo journals, the winning students will be filing stories, conducting interviews and hosting an interactive website with other participants from around the globe.  The project, called Students Live, can be followed on Twitter @studentslive.

Sony Ericsson, the official mobile sponsor of the 2010 World Cup in South Africa, has followed the suit of Pepsi, Visa and others by going completely with an online approach to customer engagement.  As a truly global event, the audience of the World Cup is hard to target by geographic region and television broadcasts don’t draw the same amount of viewers as the Super Bowl and Olympics.  This is where social media and online channels step in, providing Sony Ericsson with the ability to engage customers and generate conversations that penetrate national and social borders.  Sony Ericsson has already launched a Twitter-based competition between fans of each participating country, a ticket giveaway promotion and a World Cup branded search engine termed the Worldcupopedia.

Adoption of new marketing strategies will always lag years behind the technology itself, but the recent moves by Pepsi, Visa, Sony Ericsson and others indicate that companies are adapting to the changing landscape in full force.  These shifts in advertising budget are merely the precursors to an entire paradigm shift that will continue to see more large companies incorporating word of mouth strategies and social media as a genuine part of their marketing mix.

There wasn’t much on the site, so I followed @jackbox on Twitter – an easy way to stay up-to-date on the situation.

I was expecting witty, amusing tweets – but I didn’t exactly get that.  The updates aren’t funny.  At all.  They actually border on obnoxious.  I think what bothers me the most is that the tweets aren’t in real time.  Jack was in surgery from February 3 to February 15. What? Really? Those Siamese twins that just got separated in Ohio were in surgery for a mere 24 hours.  I doubt a dude who has a Styrofoam head needs to be in surgery for two weeks.  Shouldn’t the Styrofoam function the same as a helmet or something?  @jdotcole agrees with me: @jackbox Okay, seriously, he’s been in surgery for like two weeks now. It doesn’t even make sense anymore.

No, it didn’t make sense. At all.  But it didn’t stop there.

As of February 16^th, “Jack is in what appears to be a Coma,” reported his trusty assistant Barbara. Appears? Really?  Either he’s A. In a coma. or B. Not in a coma.  No gray area there.

Furthermore, it appears as if “Barbara” hasn’t responded to any of the numerous responses to @jackbox.  Talk about a waste of engaging your consumers.

All in all, I think @suran said it best: @jackbox Just die already.

Really.

In a recent staff meeting our company President, Terry Dry, posed an interesting question – would you wait in line for over an hour for $6.00 in cash? I’m sure there are those of us who would say “yes,” but I will take a guess that the majority of people would not.

And yet 2 million people flocked to Denny’s to get a free Grand Slam breakfast this Tuesday after the Super Bowl – a value of $5.99 on any other day.

It got me thinking – is it all psychological? Consumers (especially in our current economy) get some level of satisfaction in getting what they perceive is a great deal – no matter the value of their time, or cost in gas money to get there. Everywhere you look some brand or another is giving away free products (Krispy Kreme, Dunkin Donuts, Starbucks, Chick-fil-A) as part of one promotional offer or another, and customers are willing to wait for hours if necessary to get the free coffee or donut.

Maybe we think the brands owe us something, or maybe we think we are secretly “sticking it to ‘em” – but is it really worth it? What’s really apparent is how much brands mark up their actual product – keep in mind it only cost Denny’s $1 per breakfast (2 pancakes, 2 eggs, 2 sausage links and 2 pieces of bacon for $1?).

Second best to free is of course the discount. I like to think of myself as a promotional code connoisseur. I do no online shopping before visiting RetailMeNot.com – a coupon deal resource/community. But yet I’m so caught up in getting the discount that I don’t spend my time actually shopping around for the better deal in the first place. A little jolt of excitement comes over me when I see that shopping cart price adjust itself to minus $5, but if I did a bit more research I’m fairly certain I could find that same product $5 cheaper somewhere else.

I think that I, along with many other shoppers, feel truly accomplished when we’ve eaten that free breakfast or gotten that deal on a pair of Joe’s Jeans – it’s the thrill of the chase. Sure you spent the rest of the day with heart burn, but at least you didn’t pay for it.

It will be interesting to see how far brands take it this year – maybe I’ll finally get that free house I’ve always wanted.

I’ve been really impressed by the marketing efforts behind the rebranding of Pepsi. The recently released ads for Pepsi’s “Wordplay” campaign really caught my attention; the campaign uses the new Pepsi logo to spell out positive and cheerful words, most notable among them “HOPE” playing to generation Obama and “CAN” — a more clever attempt at the same.

Both in the spot above and the more recent campaign spot aired during the Super Bowl, Pepsi directs viewers to RefreshEverything.com. The site is Pepsi’s hub for all that’s refreshing about now – the brand, the administration, the country. Anyone can watch new videos from Pepsi and share them with friends. You can even upload your own video documenting what you would say to our new President “the man who is about to refresh America?”

The entire initiative conveys such a positive feeling. Not surprisingly, it goes hand in hand with the new presidency and administration and the current buzz that surrounds them.  Pepsi’s recallable hook “Generation Next” seems to be taking a brief pit-stop to celebrate with “Generation Now”