As I was watching the Broncos (barely) win yet again, I was struck by a Dodge Journey ad. Positioning the car as "the search engine for the real world," the campaign (Wieden + Kennedy) makes the point that people can't experience life online. The campaign was launched several months ago with the added ploy of hiding three Journeys in different parts of the country and making a contest of finding them. And ironically, you needed to go online to get clues.

Interestingly, there is no mention- zero, zip, nada- of any car-related features or benefits. It's all about experiencing life.

Three powerful marketing lessons:

1) Your competitive advantage may have nothing to do with the features of your product.

2) The campaign is strategically sticking to its theme - Journey, by virtue of the storyline in the ads, the design of the contest, and of course, the name of the car.

3) By highlighting that experiencing something online (aka "like" being there) is not the same as really being there (the copy goes "no one makes list of websites they want to visit" while driving by beautiful sites that people do want to visit in person), the campaign touches a pain point most of us know deep down is true, yet may not articulate. 

And Dodge is providing the solution: Buy the Journey, and really live.

I predict that lots of products and services will join the growing ranks of campaigns that contrast "real life" with what they portray as a much more shallow online or "virtual" life. Again, the message is you buy the product, and you really live!

P.S. Check out AdWeek's story here.

On October 1st, I wrote a blog entry called The "Socially-Enabled" Search War: Facebook vs. Google and the "Like" Button. What I talked about - "social search" - is heating up! Today, Facebook and Microsoft's search engine Bing announced that they're teaming up to provide a personalized search experience using Facebook Instant Personalization. That means when you search for say a seafood restaurant in San Diego, you'll get the usual Bing results, plus results with a Facebook icon to indicate restaurants your Facebook friends like. More details on Mashable.

It's all based on Facebook profiles and "Like" data. (Hey, maybe LinkedIn should do a similar arrangement but from a business perspective, like when searching for a new project manager, recommendations from people in your network will show up). Next are plans to show search results from "experts" along with friends and the usual results. I see a social, connection-based internet (most likely some form of Facebook) becoming the default interface for the whole internet. Lots of major assumptions about friends, affinity and social judgement underneath this growing trend. What do you think about all this? And of course, what do YOUR friends think?!

Scott Adams (Dilbert's creator) funnily (is that a word??) depicts the distractability that comes with the territory of today's online resources. Check it out.

Do we really get more done with today's technology? As my friend and colleague, the late great Bob Topor said, "Never mistake activity for progress."

E-mail, social media, and the participation enabled by web 2.0 technologies present numerous marketing opportunities for engagement. Let's not overlook the counter-opportunities - that is, online tools to reduce distraction and keep people focused. The ROI pitch? Productivity and progress.