Here's a very good example of measuring ROI with modern technology: Fueled by an aggressive consumer campaign that included an ad on the 2006 Super Bowl, retail sales of Emerald snack products manufactured by Diamond Foods increased 22% during the four weeks ending 2/19 as compared to the prior four-week period. For the week of the Super Bowl promotion (Jan. 30 - Feb. 5), Emerald retail sales grew 36% in the U.S. Food channel versus the prior week. Cornerstone of the campaign, which also included print and online components, was the release of three new 30-second television commercials. The first two aired during the national telecast of the Emerald Bowl in late December, a third debuted during the Super Bowl on February 5 and all three aired later in February during telecasts of the Winter Olympic Games. All featured acrostics that spelled out "Emerald Nuts."

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Diamond Foods gained considerable added value for its Emerald brand from intensive publicity in the days before and after Super Bowl XL. According to statistics from the monitoring service Bacon's/Multivision, Emerald was included in pre- and post-Super Bowl ad coverage with a total circulation of 173.6 million (64.6 million, print; 79.6 million, online; and 29.4 million, broadcast).

Print coverage included 62 articles in newspapers and ad publications, including articles with significant Emerald focus in The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times and USA Today. In addition, a lengthy AP article in late January that devoted three paragraphs to the Emerald ad appeared in dozens of metro and suburban papers.

Emerald was mentioned in 137 television segments on Super Bowl advertising for a publicity value of 1.4 Million, according to Bacon's/Multivision. The Emerald print ads that ran for two weeks prior to the Super Bowl in The New York Times and USA Today, as well as animated ads on key pages of Yahoo, were successful at driving traffic to the Emerald website. Visits to emeraldnuts.com were 35 times higher the day after the Super Bowl than in early January before the print and online ads began running. Emerald's online advertising contest, which invited consumers to create their own Emerald Nuts acrostics, drew over 12,500 entries.

Emerald snack nuts were introduced nationwide in August 2004. The line now has 19 products, including three new Emerald trail mix blends, which will be in limited distribution this spring and national distribution in the fall.