Well, since my beloved Patriots let the evil empire win one, I thought I would spend some time here narrating about a couple perspectives on tonight's game-within-the-game - the commercials. Now, every media outlet and thousands of blogs will have a point of view on the big winners and losers in ad land. The water coolers will be buzzing tomorrow with opinions. While, of course, I have a few - I wanted to share one key observation: The use of Microsites by the big game advertisers. Not all brands used them, but a noticeable share did. With all the debate lately about the death of the Microsite, I couldn't help notice that brands pointed people to a focused location rather than their corporate site or some other social media platform.
To name a few:
thrillicious.com (sobe water)
truthinengineering.com (audi)
snackstrongproductions.com (doritos)
mytalkingstain.com (tide)
I'm personally a big believer in Microsites that support a brand campaign or other targeted customer experience. The advantages are huge: For one, the consumer can be immersed directly into the targeted brand message that the campaign is aiming to seed without being distracted by other corporate mumbo jumbo. And secondly, but certainly important, is the ability to measure success as tied to the advertising. Especially after such an important buy in the Superbowl, a Microsite can help be a gauge of success based on traffic figures and other important metrics. In addition, tracking engagement and measuring conversions based in the defined window as it relates to the above-the-line media.
All good stuff.
[wire] stone is uniquely ranked on both Top 50 lists for BtoB and Advertising Age's Integrated Marketing and Interactive Agencies. We're also in the top 2% of marketing services agencies in the United States ranked by billings. 
