• by Karlene Lukovitz  @KLmarketdaily, March 6, 2012

Ciroc vodka saw strong engagement results from videos with integrated interactive capabilities across social media and mobile platforms shown during this year’s Super Bowl and following days, according to Ciroc’s in-house agency and the media solutions provider involved.

Sean Combs, a/k/a Diddy or P. Diddy, who is in a multi-year agreement with the Diageo PLC brand wherein he gets a performance-based share of Ciroc’s profits, starred in four 15-second “Ciroc Bowl” videos released during the game. (Ciroc did not advertise during the Super Bowl itself.)

Early on Super Bowl day, a Diddy intro video was released, in which he encouraged fans to watch the videos that would be posted during the game and accessible through his Twitter and Facebook accounts, vote on which was their favorite, and interact with him via social media.

The videos featured Diddy engaging in novel activities like salsa dancing, jumping over a bull and curling (as well as safeguarding his Ciroc drink during a turbulent private-plane trip).

Ciroc’s in-house agency, Blue Flame, timed the release of the first, Diddy-salsa-dancing video to follow the first touchdown by New York Giants wide receiver Victor Cruz, known for doing his own salsa dance each time he scores a touchdown.

At that point, rich-media banners simultaneously went live on sports-focused segments of the Say Media network --accessible both through social media and mobile. Those ads connected users to a microsite showing all four of the Diddy videos, along with the abilities to vote or comment on them, tweet to Combs (who responded to some tweets and sent out his own tweets throughout the game), or share the videos on Facebook and Twitter, without leaving the microsite.

Prior to the Super Bowl, only the “Bull Jumping” video had been available online and used as a TV spot, according to Aubrey Flynn, Blue Flame’s brand content director. “Ciroc challenged us to innovate to get passive watchers of the Super Bowl to engage with the brand during the game” and build awareness of the brand’s “Perfectly Smooth” tagline, he says.

Results: In three days, the ads generated 1.3 million impressions, more than 24,000 video views, and a mobile-clicks-to-Web site rate of 11% (site clicks averaged 5.7% across display and mobile). Average time spent with the ads was 25.5 seconds, versus a 20-seconds-or-fewer average rate across similar ad formats, according to Say Media president Troy Young.

The ads also generated more than 4,000 social-media conversations during game day and the following two days.

Ciroc also used social operating platform provider Unified to drive YouTube video views from Facebook, Twitter and other social ecosystems.

Of course, Diddy’s existing social media followings didn’t hurt. As of March 6, his Facebook page shows over 1.1 million “likes,” and his Twitter account shows more than 4.97 million followers.