We polled our team. What was their favorite Super Bowl ad?  Most were different, but each was quickly recalled and ardently defended. Despite a legion of Apple devotees no one picked 1984. We have a number of sports-themed spots but our coke drinkers ignored  Mean Joe Greene. Here’s what they said:

Google’s “Parisian Love”
The storytelling completely captured me. At the end, my two other roommates and myself all let out a simultaneous “Awwww.” –Jenna

FedEx Caveman
A balance between simplicity and complexity, comedic folly and best intentions, a cliché play but totally original. –Daniel

Reebok’s Terry Tate “Official Linebaker”
Still kills me every time I see it. It’s a relatively light touch on branding, geared towards driving views to episodes at reebok.com. It was memorable and infinitely quotable, plus there was a thematic tie-in to the big game. –Steve

It’s hilarious. And extremely well written. –Jeff

It simply made me laugh hysterically. When I first saw this commercial I thought to myself, “Our office could totally use an Office Linebacker!” –Will

FedEx Kinkos
I love this one. It shows a great way to do smart comedy through parody. –Jack

Volkswagen Beetle
It was unique, visually so fun, and cute! Also loved how they integrated digital and extended the life of the campaign by showing outtakes, additional clips, how it was made, etc., on YouTube. –Laura

Pepsi: Refresh Anthem
It’s an interesting, never before produced idea and I love the historical aspects. A lot of kids watch the Super Bowl with their parents, so it seems like a good way to bridge the gap between the two generations. –Abby

Doritos Pug Attack
It’s not the Super Bowl without funny ads. I’ve done a lot of comedy writing/performing, so this is a classic case of “set-up and pay-off,” only the pay-off is not quite what you’d expect. Plus, who doesn’t love a dog video? –Abby (she picked two)

NFL “Best Fans Ever”
It’s hard to rival – pop culture icons from 19 shows, spanning over 40 years, all speaking passionately about the product, all in 60 seconds. It combines unexpected content in such a unique way to entertain, deliver for the brand and leave the viewer wanting more. –Kelly

Coca Cola’s polar bear ads
This year’s ads look preeeetty awesome. –Alan

“When I Grow Up” Monster
Super Bowl ads don’t normally hit the trifecta: entertain, brand and sell. Most people can’t even recall the product in most Super Bowl spots. This was advertising at its most brilliant. –Brian

Betty White Snickers
The best ads are simple, funny and memorable. You spend 20 seconds wondering where they are going with Betty White playing tackle football in the mud. I laughed out loud when Abe Vigoda gets sacked. That’s good casting and good writing. –Mark B.

Because I absolutely adore her! Perfectly cast, and hilarious. –Jacque

Not only did this ad reinvigorate 88-year-old Betty White’s career, but it positioned Snickers as a company that could have a little fun. –Courtney

The 2002 Tribute to the victims of Sept. 11.
Timely, emotional, memorable. Forever a reminder of how our lives changed that day. –Fred

Coca Cola It’s Mine
Taking something as classic as the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day parade and Coca Cola to tell the story. And who doesn’t want Charlie to win? –Selena

We’re Going to Disney World
It has cemented the Disney theme park brand as THE place where the most famous, happening people want to go on vacation. –Mark F.

VW The Force
Like this little Darth Vader, I too pretend that I have the force (especially when I go through automatic doors). The subtle reactions the little kid had and the imperial march music, added a sentimental value that brought a smile to my face. –Andrew

E*Trade “Enzo the Tailor”
Who doesn’t love a witty talking toddler? Actually, I think a lot of people find these ads annoying but they crack me up every time. Plus, the use of humor to communicate portfolio management effectively presents E*Trade as an approachable solution. –Alex

McDonald’s: the Showdown
Golden age of NBA. Jordan & Bird. Quoted on playgrounds everywhere. “Off the expressway, over the river, off the billboard, through the window, off the wall – nothin’ but net.” –Todd

Super Bowl ads are our industry’s most widely viewed and closely scrutinized expressions of creativity. And with good reason. With investments averaging $3.5 million for a half-minute of America’s time, along with thousands, if not millions, more to create and produce each ad, some of America’s most famous brands will make heavy wagers on Sunday’s game.

Last year’s Super Bowl was the most watched television program in history with 111 million viewers. This year’s edition is expected to surpass that mark. Are there really that many football fans? No. The Super Bowl is a cultural experience that far transcends sport, spans all demographics, and attracts people who won’t look at another football game all year. The ads have become one of the big reasons why.

I tend to think of Super Bowl advertisers like popular music acts. There are the legends who endure, the one-hit wonders and the comeback kings.

Some brands that will advertise on Sunday are like The Beatles (think Budweiser) – they release new songs every year; almost all are good, some are great – including the 1989 Bud Bowl spot that pitted Bud and Bud Light against each other in an epic battle of the bottles, a spot that was created by the “P” in CTP, Grant Pace.

Other ads on Sunday will be remembered as one-hit wonders. Musically, you can take your pick here (nothing like a little Who Let The Dogs Out before the game Sunday). Ad-wise, two of the best were Dirt Devil’s 1997 ad featuring Fred Astaire 10 years after his death and a digitally added vacuum cleaner, and Nuveen Investments’ 2000 ad featuring the late Christopher Reeve .

Will there be a Santana or Bob Dylan in the mix this year, a comeback brand that’s trying to remake a faded image with a big splash? Chrysler did it last year with an ode to Detroit.

Some of the best spots are long, like last year’s two-minute Chrysler ad. Others are short, like Miller High Life’s 2009 spot that was all of 1 second long .

My all-time favorite is from The Beatles, I mean Budweiser. The 2002 Tribute to the victims of Sept. 11.

Enjoy the game. Enjoy the ads. Try to enjoy Madonna. Go Pats.

Best Buy, Audi, Career Builder and Dannon Yogurt are among the 2012 advertisers that have spent an average of $3.5 million – as well as staggering production costs – for 30 seconds of Super Bowl glory.

But what’s a media gal like me (and most of us, really) to do when there aren’t a few million dollars lying around the shop?

Plenty. Here are my principles for creatively planning and buying media without breaking the bank:

1. Set sights on success, wherever that may be.
Don’t focus on what you can’t buy because it’s too expensive. Get more creative and buy in places that “the other guys” forgot about. Can’t buy the premium TV spot? Try video pre-roll on sites that will replay the content.

2. Play nice, aggressively
Be transparent with vendors instead of playing hardball. Set up some good ol’ face time with your sales rep and brainstorm a game plan for your budget. Perhaps you can substitute top inventory for more frequency and a great added-value campaign. Vendors are willing to work with any budget and want to customize the perfect plan for the client. Transparency may yield more than you thought you could bargain for.

3. Act now
Stay on your toes and take advantage of last-minute or introductory deals. Buying the right “hot sale” ad space is as gratifying as an overtime interception. When someone drops out of the back cover glossy space on the day creative is due, seize it. As such, work with your client to have an opportunistic fund for this very situation.

4. Work as a team
You never know when a cool creative execution will spark an idea. (Think rich media or print ads cleverly integrated into editorial.) One of my favorite things here at CTP is working with a relentlessly creative design team. Helps keep us from falling into the habit of buying the same media.

All of us aren’t in the market for that first Super Bowl ad pod, but plenty of opportunities exist for any budget – if you’re on your game. While we’re all cheering on the Pats this weekend, devouring the ads in between, you’ll find me on the sidelines, plotting a client’s next big media plan, CTP style – innovative and, most importantly, on budget.

Two New England Patriots players recently showed the power of connecting via Twitter when they surprised fans with tickets to playoff games.

Chad Ochocinco, one of the most vocal athletes on Twitter, provided round-trip flight, hotel and tickets to the Patriots game against the Broncos to a Florida fan who had been tweeting at him for two years. The following week, Wes Welker surprised a fan who tweeted a shirtless, painted photo of himself at the game, which was played in single-digit temperatures. Welker was so impressed, he offered him tickets to the AFC Championship game.

The goodwill the athletes and, by proxy, their team got from each giveaway is hard to measure, but the sports industry is definitely taking notice. With the popularity of  MLB’s Fan Cave and the New Jersey Devils’ Mission Control last year, teams and players are interacting with fans like never before, and Twitter is playing a huge role.  According to @Pro_Athletes, there are more than 4,800 athletes on Twitter from all the major sports organizations. Athletes are using Twitter not only to interact with fans, but to support their sponsorship endorsements and comment on their sports. The recent NFL and NBA lockouts were great examples of how athletes influenced public opinion through their tweets.

Sports marketers spend hours every season dreaming up promotions that will help connect fans with their teams. The power of personable players tweeting back at their fans can be priceless. Although a recent Men’s Journal article suggested that the King of Twitter, Shaquille O’Neal, could make upwards of $5 million through sponsorship deals based on his 4.3 million followers, a monetary value of players’ non-sponsored tweets is still a ways off. But according to a study published in the International Journal of Sport Communication 17% of athletes’ tweets are responding to fans, the highest of all the content they share, and proof that athletes see the value of this interaction. You can be sure that teams are pondering how to leverage the popularity of their players’ interactions on social media, and that dynamic will factor into the ongoing relationships between teams and athletes.

So what’s next? Will fans constantly tweet at their sports heroes, hoping they’ll receive tickets? Probably. Even if they don’t, the one-on-one interaction fans get from Twitter is invaluable. It brings the excitement of talking to a player to their fingertips. And as long as athletes think before they tweet, Twitter will remain a great way to build their personal brands, enhance their teams’ images and transform the fan-athlete dynamic in ways we can only imagine.

It’s a lesson I’m reminded of as the Consumer Electronics Show fades into the rearview mirror and companies continue working toward the next product stage. A few years ago, I attended CES with a small startup to help preview a new product. Scheduled for launch later that month, it was unique, cutting-edge and had the chance to establish a standard. That’s what the media told everyone, and there was a lot of media. The client was thrilled. We were thrilled.

There was a small problem. The launch timetable we promoted wasn’t realistic. The product wasn’t ready that month. Or the next month. Or six months later. When it finally launched that fall, the effect was the polar opposite of that thrilling preview. The reasons were many, but it’s hard not to revisit CES as crossing a significant threshold. We set expectations. We established momentum.

It’s an important consideration for anyone seeking to leverage the power of public relations, whether that’s just a small story in a community newspaper, or attempts to seize attention at the largest trade show in the U.S. When you press go on a media relations program, when you actively solicit them to write, view, promote, recommend a product or service, you must be prepared for the potential ramifications. Understand that the story doesn’t end with, well, a good story. It’s just the beginning.

Can you handle the time and the demands? Can you leverage it effectively? Can you deliver on the messages you discuss? Or is the timing just not right? Be honest in the assessment, because it will have an impact on sales, marketing, operations and every piece of the business. And once you’ve peeled back the curtain, there’s no turning back.

Media coverage is a powerful thing, for any business. Done right, it can help to transform a product or a company. But you only have one chance to capture their imagination. Make sure to use it wisely.

I graduated from BU in May and, before joining CTP in June, my knowledge of advertising was limited to classroom anecdotes from my professors and an eclectic combination of internships and coffee-runs. And then there was Don Draper who, consciously or not, defined my perception of the advertising industry. When Mad Men first premiered, I was a freshman, and as each new season started, I watched with a different perspective and a little more criticism.

I grew to understand that employees of Sterling Cooper Draper Pryce had very little respect for their colleagues and almost none for their clients. Consequently in the “real world,” I expected to find account teams with huge egos, undermining each other at every turn, and creative directors kicking clients out of their offices for calling their work too risqué. Advertising seemed, for lack of a better word, easy.

What I’ve realized is that advertising is actually hard. Not in the way a classroom assignment takes all night to complete, or an internship boss takes six months to impress – but in a way that success is synonymous with a team effort. People rely on you, and you’re constantly surrounded by people who are invested equally in your success as in their own. In order to succeed, mutual respect is needed.

I wish someone had pointed out the obvious: that Don Draper and Pete Campbell fictitiously reside in the past. Today, the advertising agency is dependant on all departments working seamlessly together; it has evolved and expanded. Account and creative aren’t the only departments. Planning is no longer looked down upon as experimental. Media buys go beyond TV and print. Everyone relies on each other. And as much as I keep suggesting it, no one has time to sit around all day drinking scotch.

Nielsen estimated that 111 million people watched the 2011 Super Bowl. That topped the 106.5 million who watched the 2010 game. If the trend continues, and there is every reason to believe that it will, this year’s audience again will set a record.

Many viewers are not sports fans and will have no rooting interest in the game. Yet, they remain a captive audience. For many, it’s not the game that intrigues them, but those memorable (and sometimes forgettable) commercials. Despite a tough economy and an average cost of $3.5 million for 30 seconds, every spot was bought by the end of last year.

Working in the advertising industry, there is nothing more enjoyable than Super Bowl Sunday. The tendency of many people is to fast-forward through the ads. Or, in the case of my father-in-law, to hit the “mute” button as soon as the commercials come on the screen. But NOT on advertising’s Super Sunday. Viewers will be captivated by the creative offerings of Budweiser, Audi, VW, Nike, and many of the top brands. Most viewers will be watching the ads in anticipation of being amused or surprised in some way. And our industry will be front and center of many conversations for a solid four hours, as well as days to follow.

I will be watching each commercial and trying to estimate total production costs, determining what the key selling message was, and imagining how the commercials were presented, approved and produced. Many others in the advertising community will be watching in similar fashion. Those with commercials in the big game will be anxious to gauge the general response on social media. Brand CMOs will be sweating out the game waiting not for the winner of the Super Bowl, but for the winner of the USA Today ad tracker. And company CEOs will be watching and waiting to see if their investments effectively “moved the needle.”

The ads have been completed. The ad dollars have been invested. And the teams have been decided. For me and millions others, the Super Bowl commercials will be as interesting and exciting as the game itself. Let’s get ready for some football.

And this is coming from a huge NBA fan. I grew up on the San Antonio Spurs and spent several sleepless nights in Boston rooting for my team during the NBA’s last lockout season when the Spurs won their first Championship.

A fellow PR colleague asked me recently, “Who will care if the NBA doesn’t return?” And that’s the key question. Even die-hard NBA fan Bill Simmons told the SportsBusiness Journal’s “Sports Media & Technology” Conference attendees last week that he doesn’t think anyone will care if the lockout gets settled. Simmons continued saying, “You’ve got pro football and college. You have the holidays coming up. Nobody is going around thinking ‘I can’t believe the NBA’s not here.’ ” And he’s one of the sport’s biggest proponents.

And while I disagree with Simmons that fans simply don’t care (ask the thousands in the seven NBA-only markets like San Antonio if they care), I do think he’s got a point that with so many other sports options, will consumers truly miss the NBA? Probably not. They will find other ways to spend the money they would’ve otherwise spent on tickets, concessions and merchandise. And that’s where the NBA and NBPA have a PR crisis on their hands. The NBA is one of the best-marketed sports leagues in the world and has done so much to build up its brand globally and the brands of its players. Yet, it is willing to put all that at risk. And for what?  Billions of dollars that they can’t figure out how to divvy up? A 50/50 split isn’t fair? Try explaining that to your average fan who is struggling to pay his or her mortgage or find a job. That’s not an easy sell. Not when this is the third sports lockout in the past six years and by now, everyone has lost sympathy for professional athletes and team owners.

While personally I’ll be sad if there isn’t an NBA season, the true losers in this scenario aren’t the players or the team owners, but the thousands of arena workers, local businesses and team staff that have no say in the lockout and who are affected by this decision. They are the ones who do truly care about the lockout because for them, it’s their livelihood.

Tell us what you think: Do you think fans will come back to the NBA? Why?

For a cool $40-$45 million Disney recently bought Babble, a parenting news and blog site with over 200 contributing mom/dad bloggers. While it’s a slam dunk for Disney in reaching its target audience, the Wall Street Journal is correct in saying that this begins to blur the lines between advertising and blogs. However, a deal like this only further reinforces the powerful influence this community has, especially one that’s recognized by a company like Disney. For more on Babble, MediaPost also does a nice job explaining.

As PR professionals, we’re always trying to identify influential bloggers. Sites like Babble easily turn into a resource when going through this process. These bloggers have been selected to contribute based on their existing presence in the space, and usually come with a wide network. But this landscape isn’t all burp cloths and sunshine. As with any social channel, content and following are key. We saw this last month as Gannet recently shut down its MomsLikeMe website due to low site traffic. Hopefully the trend continues in the positive direction, while maintaining the authenticity that has catapulted the parent blogosphere into the forefront.

But, as part of the series, Beth Daley and Jenn Abelson wrote a sidebar that revealed something interesting about marketing.

The Globe showed what some in the industry are doing to prove the fish they are serving is what they promised. It used fisherman Steve Arnold to tell the story of Trace and Trust, a program developed by fishermen and chefs to provide quality assurance to their customers.  Immediately after hauling in black sea bass off the coast of Rhode Island, Arnold began taking pictures of the fish with his phone and then tweeting and emailing the photos. “Orders began rolling in before (he) even got back to shore.”  The next night the fish found itself on the plate of diners at Boston’s 606 Congress restaurant in the Renaissance Hotel. Under the program, wait staff provide the diners an ID number and a QR code that allows them to use their smartphone to confirm where and when that fish was caught.

Not only does Trace and Trust allow fishermen to market themselves and sell their catch quickly, it provides them and restaurants the competitive advantage of verifiable freshness. Which is pretty important for those selling fish, especially in light of the Globe reporting. The approach transcends the fishing and dining industries. It’s a model for how all kinds of business – large and small – must begin to think about technology, transparency, social media and the new rules of marketing and communications.