Got a product or message?  Well there is no better stage to showcase it than as an ad aired during this year’s Super Bowl, featuring the Pittsburgh Steelers versus the Green Bay Packers.

The audience alone should be enticing enough to get your ad or message out there.  Last year’s Super Bowl drew 106 million viewers.  Of course to get your ad run, you’d have to pay an average of $1 million dollars per 30 seconds of air time.

We have entered an era in advertising where running commercial spots during the “Big Game” are no longer the only method used to promote brands.  Social media has joined the movement and can be quite an effective method as two of its heaviest hitters, Facebook and Twitter, take the field.

Mercedes-Benz is promoting a contest called “The World’s First Twitter-Fueled Race” as a supplement and lead up to its Super Bowl ad.  The contest includes a two-day race between teams of drivers (with a celebrity coach) and they can only move forward and overcome challenges by the support of their Twitter followers.  The race ends in the Dallas area, where this year’s Super Bowl is being played.  The sponsor will randomly select the Twitter handle of a participant who joined the winning team.  That lucky person will get to chose a grand prize consisting of three options: attend the 2011 PGA Championship, attend the 2011 US Open (Tennis) or the Mercedes-Benz Fashion Week in New York City in September, 2011.  Talk about incentives!

Bud Light is scheduled to run three :30 spots during the game.  As a supplement, it will utilize its Facebook page to have fans use clues from the ads run on television to unlock more ads.  This is an awfully unique spin, if a brand can use its ads to get consumers to search more ads, I would consider that a win for them.

What about nonprofits?  Can they fit into the Social Media/Super Bowl blitz?

Absolutely! However, the objective of using social media during the Super Bowl for exposure should not be the end but simply the means. Using social media to promote your nonprofit should not just be used to get followers on Twitter or fans on FaceBook, but rather how you utilize the participation.

For instance, Pepsi skipped out on submitted ads in last year’s Super Bowl and instead launched “Pepsi Refresh”.    This initiative allowed people to vote on community projects that would be in part sponsored with the money that Pepsi invested — $20 million.

According to refresheverything.com, the project was responsible for “refreshing” 200 communities, 74 schools, and  36 parks.  24,000 people volunteered in this initiative as well.  All this from a social media initiative!

In years past, consumers could only watch and critique the ads as they ran in the façade of the Super Bowl scene.  Now, you can interact with them in ways never before imagined.  More importantly, now you can get involved.