Socialmedia

Super Bowl Sunday is just hours away–a record 100 million viewers worldwide are expected to tune in to this year’s matchup, which pits the New Orleans Saints against the Indianapolis Colts, and industry analysts forecast that advertisers will spend more than $200 million to promote their brands during the game. The mobile industry is poised to play a significant role in the Super Bowl XLIV advertising onslaught: Boost Mobile will air a spot bringing back the 1985 Chicago Bears and their immortal “Super Bowl Shuffle,” text answer service kgb will premiere its first-ever Super Sunday clip and mobile music discovery provider Shazam will team with clothing brand Dockers to launch a multi-platform ad campaign. and while reports indicate that CBS is charging anywhere between $2.5 million and $3 million for each 30-second spot, Qualcomm’s FLO TV mobile broadcast subsidiary is ponying up to debut two new commercials during the game–one pairing venerable rockers The Who with Black Eyed Peas frontman will.i.am, the other spotlighting CBS Sports commentator Jim Nantz–while a third promo, slated to air prior to kickoff, will feature Nantz alongside CBS Sports studio host James Brown.

Regardless of what happens on the field in Miami, social media appears poised to emerge as the breakout success of Super Bowl XLIV–the National Football League, advertisers, players and fans are all embracing the possibilities of the platform in an attempt to forge a richer, more interactive viewer experience. The tone was set by Pepsi, which ended a 23-year Super Bowl advertising run to instead promote its new “Pepsi Refresh” initiative via social media–the cola giant will give away $20 million in grant money to fund projects in six categories (health, arts and culture, food and shelter, the planet, neighborhoods and education), instructing consumers to submit ideas using Facebook and Twitter. Advertisers like Coca-Cola and Budweiser are integrating Facebook into their Super Bowl ads, and the NFL itself even has its own official hash tag, #SB44, encouraging fans to add the tag to their Flickr photos and Twitter posts. in addition, viewers can visit the NFL.com website on their mobile devices to vote for the Super Bowl XLIV MVP–the fan vote will count 20 percent towards determining MVP honors.

What most clearly separates Super Bowl XLIV from the 43 previous NFL title games is that players are tweeting live from South Beach, giving their Twitter followers unfiltered access to the nonstop bacchanalia that leads up to kickoff. Motorola is partnering with the NFL Players Association to supply all-star Twitter coverage–the handset maker gave MotoBLUR-enabled devices to Cincinnati’s Chad Ochocinco, Baltimore’s Ray Rice, Arizona’s Darnell Dockett and Washington’s Chris Cooley, and the players are broadcasting information and photos via Twitter and Twitpic, posting daily video summaries to the Motorola website and hosting expanded features on the Ochocinco News Network’s Facebook page. (OCNN is Ochocinco’s one-man social news network–the colorful Bengals wide receiver boasts more than 733,000 Twitter followers.) “Please mainstream media, don’t be mad at me for doing the job you guys have failed to do correctly, giving the fans what they really want,” Ochocinco tweeted during the annual Super Bowl Media Day on Tuesday. Who says the NFL is the no Fun League? thanks to social media, Super Bowl XLIV is already shaping up to be the most engaging championship game ever. -Jason