Today, the Super Bowl is played. New England Patriots vs. Giants, in case you have been out of the country in the last week or so. For advertising and communications people who wouldn't otherwise watch football, this is a must-see game. For the advertising. It costs a lot. Because lots of people will be watching. Some advertisers only run advertising on the Super Bowl. That is their strategy: spend millions once a year to get a large, captive (and hopefully, receptive) audience. It has become sport to talk about the ads, dissect them, analyze them, discuss them. In this respect, they win. In fact, on CBS Sunday Morning, they just had a story about Super Bowl advertising, in fact, giving some free advertising to one of the advertisers. And there is the real value of advertising on the Super Bowl--extra publicity in the form of media attention. Traditionally, this is called public relations and some people call it free advertising. But in fact, this is not free advertising...it is expensive advertising. You get the public relations bang because you spent lots of money. Not because you are newsworthy prima facie.

One other interesting aspect that the CBS story pointed out is that most of the Super Bowl ads will send you to an Internet address. It makes it interactive.

Entertainment Weekly has a gallery of the most "memorable" Super Bowl ads here http://www.ew.com/ew/gallery/0,,20010598,00.html

The interesting thing is I only remember one or two of these. What does this tell you?

I will probably watch part of the game...and I will watch the ads of course. It's for work.