Mullen ranking Super Bowl ads via Twitter – Using Radian6 – Boston Herald reports

By Donna Goodison – Boston Herald | link to article on bostonhearld.com
Friday, February 5, 2010

If you’re wondering what the Twittersphere is saying about this Sunday’s Super Bowl commercials, Boston ad firm Mullen is keeping a running score.

Mullen partnered with New Brunswick’s Radian6 to create BrandBowl 2010. The online ad-review site collects and analyzes all worldwide tweets mentioning Super Bowl commercials and translates them into a near-real-time, top-10 ranking of each brand’s popularity.

Launched yesterday, www.brandbowl2010.com shows the number of tweets that mention each brand; a “net sentiment” score that measures whether Twitterers’ overall reaction to each brand is positive or negative; and a list of adjectives used in tweets to describe each commercial.

A formula that combines the volume of conversation about a spot with the sentiments expressed determines the ranking.
Mullen developed the site to gain visibility and demonstrate its creative thinking related to social media, according to chief creative officer Edward Boches.

“Inventing things that are experiential and participatory – that are as much defined by the people who go on the site and use it, as by the site itself – is the new kind of creativity that’s going on in the age of social media, where it’s not so much the message as it is the community,” Boches said.

Mullen will publish the results in a blog on its Web site on Monday and offer the last-place brand some “free ideas” for next year.