In Italy we follow SuperBowl at a much lighter level than people do in the United States, for a few reasons that can be easily understood, including distance, culture and attention for other sports. We care much more for what happens during breaks: which spots are the most interesting ones, which ones are the funniest, which brands invest more and which ones choose not to invest.
The evevolution at a content and language level - if any - looks like it's very well hidden, as Peter Kim suggests: an analysis from 2007 highlights a situation that's totally similar to 2010 scenario.
What if SuperBowl was a chance to understand what the possibilities for evolution are in the way brands and consumer devlelop their relationship through mainstream and social media?
I, for instance, have learnt two lessons from this SuperBowl:

• It's much more useful to understand how we can integrate advertising with engagement through social media – and, more in general – online, instead of writing articles trying to define who invested the most in "social" vs who focused on traditional models. The reason? Writing about brands that invest vs brands that don't, the next year we'll have the same old "guess the advertising" contest and no added value to brands and consumers. Considering all the brands that take part to SuperBowl today, a very small number of them develop real engagement (as Mack Collier points out). If we work to identify models of engagement that work well, we go beyond pure commenting of a tactic and find the possibility for a better communication and marketing model;
• A trend that needs to be highlighted is the contemporary fruition of television and social content, mostly live, but not only. As I wrote in a recent post of mine and as I suggested in a comment on Andrea's sul Womarketing blog Social Media and TV (in its traditional meaning) are getting closer, while models are developing, in which brands can join easily by bringing added value. Think about the number of users that saw the SuperBowl while interacting through social media (Source Nielsen). Only a few of these users visited places dedicated to the event, while the majority interacted on mainstream networks, crating a discussion niches. Isn't it a huge opportunity for brands to favour conversations, adding (in this case, too) value?

If we get out of the "guess the advertising" game, there are a lot of ways to build more effective models.
What trends have you spotted? Are there more useful ways to make conversation and channel integration better?
This post by eMarketer looks very interesting, focusing television socialization in relationship with SuperBowl.

Photograph edited starting from Trekkyandy and Rick

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