The Divine Miss M

This year’s Super Bowl is shaping up to provide a variety of commercials from the usual industry suspects – cars, soft drinks, snacks and beer.

Some commercial messages will be unexpected such as David Beckham touting a bodywear line (ie. underwear) for H&M.

Some spots will be longer in length to tell a greater story (similar to the last year’s Chrysler ad with Eminen which was two minutes).

All will cost approximately $3.5 million dollars per 30 seconds to hopefully reach somewhere north of 110 million people.

But one company will use February 5 as the birthday for its newest  in a family of sweet members– meet Ms. Brown – the latest M&M.

According to the New York Times, Mars Chocolate North America is using this year’s game to introduce Ms. Brown, the “chief chocolate officer” at M&M.

She joins Red and Yellow – the original plain and peanut variety, Blue who plays a mean sax, Ms. Green who arrived on the scene in 2010 and a personal favorite, Orange who used to be crispy but now appears to be the skiddish spokescandy for M&M pretzel.

The reason this effort is so exceptional is precisely that the Super Bowl is only the beginning for Ms. Brown. 

According to the aforementioned article, she will have social media presence on the M&M fan FaceBook page and her own Twitter account at @mmsbrown. Ms. Brown will show up at special events on both coasts. Her image will grace signage in local stores. And according to reports, she will have media appearances on the syndicated radio program, “Elvis Duran and the Morning Show” (Z-100 in New York) and will be a part of the “The Celebrity Apprentice” when it returns to NBC in February.  

(Imagine if she was ever invited to host Saturday Night Live or become a Simpson character…then she would truly have it made.) 

But personality symbols like Ms. Brown are not rare. The Pillsbury Dough Boy, Snap, Crackle and Pop, the Energizer Bunny  -- they all come alive in advertising and other promotional efforts because these created characters embody and reflect the brand beautifully.  

For advertisers, they’re a lot cheaper to develop than hiring a live spokesperson or model. They won't flub their lines and they aren’t high maintenance when they aren’t making commercials.  Best of all, like Ms. Brown and her buddies, when they are actually “made” of the product they represent they are that much easier to notice, understand and remember.