Designed and implemented by Vancouver-based Think Social Media, raising awareness of grid iron’s biggest game of the season was as important as highlighting what else visitors could do in the Dallas area (the game takes place in Arlington, about 20 miles outside the city) ahead of the game.

But with all the pre-Super Bowl noise, surely such a task is nigh on impossible?

Think Social Media came up with the following idea:

Arguably the people most interested in the 2011 Super Bowl are the residents of Green Bay and Pittsburgh, where this year’s finalists Packers and Steelers respectively call home.

So, why not get them involved in a competition to win tickets, hotel stay, spending money, etc.

A “mystery man” was planted in each city and the first person to locate the person and relay the message “Have you been to Dallas recently” won the prize.

The game was promoted on the VisitDallas Facebook page and organiser’s enlisted the help of well known grid iron bloggers in each city to help share clues.

Think Social Media’s chief strategist William Bakker says:

“The clues tied in to imagery and facts about attractions in Dallas and became increasingly specific as the weekend went on.  By printing the clues on photos they were easy to share through Twitter, and were eye-catching on the blogs and Facebook.”

Given the push by prominent bloggers in each city, general excitement about the Super Bowl, viral nature of people talking about it on Twitter and Facebook  and the quirky nature of the campaign, Mystery Man became a hit almost overnight.

Bakker says the VisitDallas Facebook page found itself with 10,000 extra fans within three days, 100,000 hits and around half a million news impressions on Facebook member news feeds.

But then the mainstream media caught on – initially local news TV stations began featuring the search for the Mystery Man and, finally, CNN and others realised that there was a fascinating and fun side story taking place in the lead up to the game… every time mentioning Dallas.

Bakker says:

“We definitely succeeded in getting people talking about Dallas. We also proved that when you run a social media campaign within passionate communities, you don’t need a big media budget.  And, if the community is passionate enough, you’ll even make it on the news.”

VisitDallas will no doubt be delighted, too…

NB: Worth mentioning that both Mystery Men were found!

NB: Read Bakker’s blog post for more details about the campaign.

Tnooz has an early view of the first:

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pQKKLE6-Xag

Kayak says it is the first of three new TV ads to be aired over the next six weeks on US TV.

The latest ads come six months after the very first TV spots were produced by Kayak as it looks boost its general consumer awarness across the US. There are still no plans to roll out the ads elsewhere to its other markets in Europe.

Woodside, Google’s vice president of American operations, says Google also shouldn’t have linked Buzz to people’s Gmail contacts because e-mail contacts aren’t necessarily part of people’s social networks.

Google employees used Buzz internally before its release and didn’t pick up some of these issues, he says.

“That’s the cost, to some degree, of innovation,” says Woodside, referring to missteps with Buzz.

Woodside was answering questions today after delivering a keynote address at the TravelCom conference in Dallas.

Woodside also addressed Google’s motivations for running its first Super Bowl ad, the Parisian Love video.

He says much of the buzz these days surrounding Google has little to do with its core search functionality so Google’s goal with the  ad was to reach a large TV audience at the Super Bowl and reconnect with consumers’ passion for search.

Woodside also lent his support for Google’s initiatives in behavioral advertising and believes that the advertising industry is moving in the right direction.

Google’s policy is to be transparent about behavioral advertising and give consumers tools to opt out of targeted advertising, if that is what they desire, he says.

In that regard, Google has a Google Ads Preferences manager, which is geared to inform consumers about which interests Google associates with them, and it also gives the consumers the power to add or delete interests.

[I just looked up my Google Ad Preferences and it says: "No interest categories are associated with your ads preferences so far." Woops, I guess I'm fairly uninteresting.]

Woodside says the reason few people click on display ads is that targetting is not as advanced as it is with search ads, and that behavioral advertising will improve results for display-ad publishers.

And, what’s in store for e-readers like the Kindle or possibly the iPad?

Arguing that Amazon’s Kindle is a closed system, Woodside believes open systems will eventually prevail and that particular devices will become less important.

Woodside believes eventually most e-books will be accessible over the Web through browsers.

Says Woodside: “On the Web, open systems seem to win in the long run.”

The highly competitive marketplace which takes place annual during the ad breaks is a fertile breeding ground for the US marketing community to slam or gush over the respective 30-second spots from some of the biggest brands in the country.

Reprise Media says the HomeAway ad, featuring Chevy Chase and Beverly D’Angelo in a return to their classic roles as the Mr and Mrs Griswold from the National Lampoon comedies, was a “Touchdown” compared to other ads on show.

HomeAway joined Google, Boost Mobile, E-Trade and Honda as the only companies to take advantage of a wider off and online media schedule.

Reprise says:

“TV connected with search, landing these advertisers in the end zone!”

A recent Comscore report suggested nearly one in three (around 30 million) people were expected to log on to their computers during the match extravaganza.

Around 14% of the Super Bowl audience was expected to visit one of the advertiser’s websites as well.

Reprise says advertisers not making the most of a mixed-media strategy included Budweiser, Intel and Dockers.

In a statement, HomeAway says:

“Daily unique visitors to vacation rental website up by more than 500 percent on day following debut of movie trailer-style commercial featuring Chevy Chase and Beverly D’Angelo reprising their roles as Clark and Ellen Griswold; one million incremental page views for website immediately following airing of ad.”

Here’s a taste of the campaign — not the actual ad — in this video from Austin News KXAN.com.

The ad itself won’t be publicized until the third quarter of the Super Bowl, but is known to revolve around all the mishaps that can supposedly take place at hotels — as opposed to the value and amenities that await the traveler at HomeAway’s favored vacation-rental sector.

The 30-second ad is said to resemble a movie trailer and will drive viewers to a HomeAway microsite, which features a 15-minute “Hotel Hell Vacation” film starring actors Beverly D’Angelo and Chevy Chase, who update their roles in the 1980s flick, “National Lampoon Vacation.”

The Super Bowl ad will subsequently be aired on the Travel Channel, the Discovery Channel, HGTV, TBS, USA Network and the Food Network.

It’s all part of Austin, Texas-based HomeAways first national soup-to-nuts, integrated marketing campaign, which kicks off with the Super Bowl ad.

Online advertising and social-media efforts also are part of the national campaign. Google and Yahoo will get online ads, as well as About.com, Concierge.com and iExplore, the company says.

The Chevy Chase character, Clark Griswold, already is equipped with Facebook pages and a Twitter account.

Matt Cohen, HomeAway’s director of global brand marketing, says buying a Super Bowl ad wasn’t an easy decision, with CBS reportedly asking for some $2.6 million for each 30-second ad.

Cohen says HomeAway studied the outcomes for past Super Bowl advertisers and was heartened that dot-com advertisers “seem to return year after year.”

He adds that HomeAway is in a strong financial condition and call the Super Bowl “perfect timing” as it falls within “the peak travel booking period.”

Hopefully, all of that $1 million in new hardware will hold up during the expected Web-traffic blitz.

And, then the challenge will be to engage a new, larger audience to ensure that the $1 million hardware investment was not for naught.