Flash Video Marketing - Review the Super Bowl Commercials on AOL Sports

The Ingredients:
2 parts Flash Video Marketing
1 part Visitor Participation
1 part Viral Marketing
1 part User Generated Content -- for the user generated ads...
--We recommend adding one of the Most Watched Super Bowls Ever

Recipe Yields:
A brilliant web marketing idea that I'm about to explain...

Everyone loves the super bowl commercials, but I'm not going to review them here. Don't get me wrong, I love them too, but I'm actually going to review a mechanism for reviewing the super bowl commercials online... What does that actually mean? Read on.

AOL Sports - A Flash Video Environment for Watching the Super Bowl Ads:
As I signed into IM on Monday morning, I was hit with an advertisement that I just couldn't resist. "Which ads were the best? Tell us at AOL.com!" OK, so I clicked through and visited one of the best uses of flash video that I have seen recently. AOL Sports provides a flash-based environment for reviewing all of the super bowl ads, broken down by quarter. Then, you can post your comments by ad, and vote for your favorites. In addition, they provide an easy mechanism for using IM or email to send a link to your friends and family.

So, AOL Sports combined:
* Flash Video - one of the hottest ways to tap into the viral nature of the web and to provide entertaining content so visitors stay longer
* Visitor Participation - enabling visitors to comment and vote on their favorite super bowl commercials
* Viral Marketing - enabling visitors to easily pass the link around via IM or email
* Interactive Environment - AOL made the site easy to use so you don't need to be a web geek to figure out how to watch, vote, and comment!

And of course, AOL promoted their other features and segments, such as fantasy baseball, fantasy racing, and their AOL sports website and brand.

And my favorite ad?
There were several I liked, such as the Bud Light Face Slap, the Sierra Mist Combover, and the Fedex Moon Office, but I must admit that the user generated commercial for Doritos simply titled The Crash was my favorite.

A few reasons why:
* It was user generated --take that, big time creative directors! :-0
* I remembered it after the super bowl was over and it left a positive memory in my mind.
* I remembered the brand, which many super bowl commercials don't achieve...
* Did I mention it was user generated?? Good job Dale from NC!

GG