The best thing we saw all weekend—including everything related to the Super Bowl—was SNL’s promo parody for “Downton Abbey,” or as Spike TV would call it, “Fancy 'Entourage.’”



If you didn’t tune in the big game, or perhaps couldn’t stomach Madonna’s halftime show—which was pretty damn entertaining—you missed more than just another halftime publicity stunt. You also missed these marketing failures, along with a couple of other blunders that took place off the field …

Like accidently celebrating New York’s victory more than 24 hours prior to kickoff. An error on the official Giants’ website congratulated the still-then-to-be Super Bowl XLVI Champions on their win. Sure, it was premature, but perhaps it was just the positive thinking the team needed.

And given the state of our economy, the Giants’ triumph was also just what the marketplace needed. A theory states that a win by the National Football Conference (NFC) champion predicts an up year for stocks. Even Forbes reports NFC victories are twice as valuable as those of the American Football Conference.

Supermarkets also benefit from Super Bowl Sunday, with Americans devouring some 1.25 billion chicken wings, an estimated 69.9 million pounds of avocados, and enough brews to make the football holiday the eighth-biggest day for beer consumption each year—not to mention the 48 million people to order takeout.

With any luck, none of that food was ordered from a Mexican-style restaurant thought responsible as the source of a mysterious multistate Salmonella outbreak, with three chains—Chipotle, Qdoba, and Taco Bell—having locations in each of the 10 states reporting victims of the epidemic.

With people tweeting from every state about Sunday’s Super Bowl—from the actual game to the commercials and celebrities in attendance—one has to wonder why the NFL thought it necessary to pay to secure #SuperBowl as a promoted hashtag?

Besides, as a story from Time indicates, all those hashtags might be muddling your message.

Breckenridge Brewery, on the other hand, consider your message received loud and clear. While it didn’t fork over the ka-ching for a primetime Super Bowl spot, the Colorado company did launch its “Truth in Beervertising” campaign on Sunday night, targeting one very interesting person—as well as one who’s not so interesting.



Another big event taking place this weekend was the debut of designer Jason Wu’s line for Target. The collection launched online just after midnight on Sunday morning, and by now it’s pretty much all sold-out.

You don’t have to be a fashion maven to achieve success in Silicon Valley, though wearing fashionable socks can help you get your foot in the door. The New York Times "reports" that the fedoras and briefcases of the “Mad Men” era have been replaced in the land of tech by ostentatiously patterned socks. Wearing argyle or polka dots on your feet means you’re part of the “in-crowd,” according to the Times. Yes, this article is as ridiculous as it sounds.

Fancy socks aren’t the only crazes popping up around the workplace. From reverse mentoring to co-working spaces, check out these 10 trends to watch at the office—that is, if you’re not telecommuting.