Where was wireless at the Super Bowl?

Alexis de Tocqueville might have saved himself a lot of travel if he could have watched a few Super Bowl broadcasts.
It’s no secret that Super Bowl commercials act as a sort of barometer for what Americans are all about. The expectations surrounding the Big Game are as much about ads for fast food, sexy gadgets, light beer and battleship-sized SUVs as they is about nickel defenses and shotgun formations.
So with my laptop at the ready, an ice chest at my feet and my Stadium Pal in place, I settled in on the couch Sunday afternoon to find out where mobile data fits into the vast shopping mall of U.S. consumerism.
The answer? On the periphery, apparently. Because on Super Sunday, mobile had a lower profile than an “Iron Chef America” judge.
Carriers in attendence
Nearly every tier-one carrier spent a few dollars early in the broadcast. The half-hour pre-game broadcast (which, of course, followed the four-hour pre-game show) featured some messages directly from the carriers. Verizon Wireless plugged its video, music and mapping offerings with a clip for the Voyager. Sprint Nextel Corp. hawked its BlackBerry Pearl. AT&T Mobility followed with its stuffed-monkey commercial, which focuses on a traveling businessman sending cameraphone pics of his kid’s toy. And T-Mobile USA Inc. bought time for the latest installment of its amusing campaign featuring ballers Charles Barkley and Dwayne Wade, who shill for the carrier’s MyFaves offering.
The financial behemoth Chase joined the mix with a couple of spots touting a service that alerts customers via mobile (at a party, or on the face of Yosemite’s El Capitan) of suspicious activity on their accounts.
But what I was really hoping for — and found sadly lacking — was efforts to place mobile in a larger context. I wanted to see ads that include mobile, but didn’t necessarily focus on it. Stuff that showed wireless wasn’t a siloed industry anymore, but a growing part of everyday life in America.
The final tally: one commercial. Well, one and a half.
Mobile shopping
Cars.com delivered the only commercial that really had what I wanted to see. The spot, which came about halfway through the second quarter, featured a savvy shopper on the lot of a dealer.
“No, this is the one I want,” the consumer says as he’s approached by a salesman. “Cars.com had me prepared before I came in. I used my cellphone to get the listings and pricing info.”
The ad managed to make mobile an integral part of the shopping experience without hitting viewers over the head with the wireless angle. Bingo. Just as importantly, the site — which is powered by New York’s Crisp Wireless — redirects users to a mobile-friendly landing page with a simple menu inviting shoppers to browse listings, find a local dealer or access Kelley Blue Book information.
A spot from the United Way aired a few minutes later, and the charity’s come-on was as brief as it was simple. The 10-second animated ad featured a voiceover pitch for charity from hunky gunslinger Tom Brady.
“Do your part,” Brady urged. “Text ‘fit’ to UNITED (864833) to give $5 to United Way youth fitness. A little you goes a long way.”
A noble cause, without a doubt. And the campaign, which is powered by the Denver-based startup Mobile Accord, does what any good wireless ad should do: It presents a plea and offers a simple request for an affordable amount.
The blink-or-you’ll-miss-it spot may have gotten lost, though, amid spots for a day-trading toddler, soda-hogging parade floats and, inexplicably, a pickup being swung around a giant hyperbolic chamber. The short code UNITED was a no-brainer, and those of us who texted in a donation received a message asking to confirm our gift via text. But a few seconds probably wasn’t enough for most viewers to appreciate the pitch, absorb the campaign and retain the call to action.
“Text ‘fit’ to what?” my wife asked. “What am I supposed to do? It was too fast.”
More needed
But if the United Way ad was done on a shoestring budget — as if any Super Bowl spend could be described as “shoestring” — at least it was bold enough to gamble on a new medium. Where was Pizza Hut’s new text-ordering service? Where was the new wave of mobile-banking services? Where were the compelling mapping applications that pose such a threat to stand-alone navigation devices?
One four-hour window gives an anecdotal view of the landscape, of course, and it’s tough to blame mainstream U.S. companies for not putting more marketing muscle behind their mobile offerings. Text messaging has only recently gone mainstream among Americans, after all, and multimedia offerings such as music and TV are still seen as novelties by the consumers who are aware of them at all.
As mobile data moves beyond early adopters into mass-market users, though, it will need more marketing dollars from its well-heeled allies. Beta tests and viral campaigns are crucial to innovation, of course. But if pizza chains and financial institutions really want to leverage the power of mobile phones, they’ll have to invest more heavily in marketing the new medium.