Whether you’re a football fan or ad man, the truth is you’ve probably never given any serious thought to buying a Super Bowl ad.  But if you’ve got $4 million to burn next year, you might ask yourself: Do Super Bowl ads actually work?  

LAST YEAR’S TOP THREE

Let’s take a quick look at last year’s three highest-rated Super Bowl ads (according to YouTube’s Ad Blitz) and how business has been for the companies who ran them.

#GoldRush.
#HIMYM.
#TheOffice.
#TheVoice.
#RHOBH.

Have you been noticing those little words in the lower right and left corners of your TV screen during your favorite television shows? They are hashtags, Twitter's way of marking keywords or topics for conversation on the social networking and microblogging service. And they are permeating our television screens, as 2011 became the year where social media and television watching collided in a brilliant display of taking what used to be a very individual, passive moment -- watching our TV's  -- and expanding it into a multi-platform, engaged conversation with friends and strangers alike.

The recent events facing both Penn State University and the Herman Cain Presidential campaign demonstrate just how quickly a crisis can arise and escalate. The truth is that we live in an every-phone-is-a-camera-TMZ-world, and no one in the political arena, professional sports, the entertainment world, or the corporate boardroom can realistically believe they are immune.

It was a hard-fought race, but she did it.  State Senator Alberta Darling won re-election after a fierce fight in Wisconsin. 

“Hi, I’m a Mac. And I’m a PC.”

How many times have we heard those words? For us political junkies who set our DVRs to record ads and not programs, Apple’s pioneering ad campaign holds a valuable lesson in the brave new world of influencing voters.

So what exactly does the Mac vs. PC war have to do with politics? A lot actually...