The AMA on Super Bowl Ads

After reading the AMA blog post - "The Super Bowl Spots: What Worked, What Didn't", I realized first there was no way they could know which spots worked and second how it was an analogy for what management often sees as what is wrong with Marketing.

While I agree with their assessment about the creative execution of the ads, what really counts is if the ads sell more stuff. That won't be known for a while.  Chances are the GoDaddy ad did drive people to their site to see what else Danica Patrick was going to do in the shower.  It was measurable.  It wasn't brilliant cinematic execution but then again it didn't need to be.

Marketing is often seen as a creative bunch that spends a lot of money and shows little in the way of demonstrable results. They measure things like "leads" and unique visits to the web site.  In this rough economy the only metric that matters is deals closed.  If Marketing doesn't wake up to that reality and connect everything they do to selling more stuff, it will be a bitter lesson to learn.