Being that it is Superbowl Sunday you can expect that many people will be using Twitter as a communication channel as people share updates about the game, festivities and the Superbowl commercials. The NFL has a prime opportunity as this is the worlds largest televised sporting event watched around the world.

The NFL has a Twitter account as well as a Twitter Superbowl 43 account. You can see the updates that they are publishing on their Superbowl website. It would appear that they are simply publishing updates at a very infrequent rate. It is Superbowl Sunday morning as I write this and there has not been a post in over 12 hours,  which sort of misses the point and where they have an opportunity to create enhanced brand value.

They are trying to make the Twitter content on the event site more formalized. Which misses the point of immediacy and conversant tweets. I will say it is step in the right direction, but the execution misses a lot. They might be much better served to display on the website what all the FANS are saying about the game. This then acts as a true lens into the football audience and what they are doing, thinking and sharing. They could have taken an idea I had months ago; which is setting up a team of Superbowl Tweeters who could have been at the game and all the pregame festivities who could group twitter and share photos, videos and it would feel much more intimate. It is important to note that they have only 2390 followers on Twitter which means they have not promoted this channel at all. In fact it is pretty well hidden and only an edge person like myself tracked it down, and I had to hunt to find it.

Business advertisers are spending north of 3.5 million dollars per 30 second advertisement to reach the audience, create buzz, drive brand awareness and sales. As everyone gathers around the water cooler on Monday people will be discussing their favorite superbowl ads. Many of these ads actually will drive large amounts of online traffic as people go online and make the cross from broadcast television to online engagement. We will see some cross channel promotion as some of these advertisers have a presence on Twitter to continue the engagement and conversation after these Ad spots. You can follow the Twitter conversations regarding the Superbowl Ads at #superads09

I do know of one Superbowl advertiser that is doing something very interesting around Twitter: H&R Block. They have a very interesting Ad spot which features Murray the Tax preparer and they have extended the character and given him a presence on Twitter. You can follow Murray the Tax Guy on Twitter here.

I think the important ideas for brands to take away is that and H & R Block has done an excellent job with these areas for distribution, awareness, consumption and engagement. A few key points:

* Extend the Superbowl beyond a 30 second spot by integrating across all marketing channels. They will be incorporating across the  HRblock.com homepage, Youtube brand channel, Myspace brand channel and Facebook brand channel and all will be integrating the Superbowl spot after it airs today.

* Enable two-way dialog by being active on Twitter and having multiple brand channels open.  Murray is a character extension that will be a little fun to see how the rest of the story of the ad plays out.

* All of their channels are open for customer dialog; which is where they do an excellent job in execution and engagement.

This is my personal favorite Tweet from Murray thus far…