This weekend sees the start of the RBS 6 Nations, and Rugby
fans are gearing up for what should be a great tournament.
There are however a handful of interesting digital campaigns
surrounding the tournament.
The official RBS 6 Nations Facebook page is well put
together. In just over one week this site has generated over 12,500 friends –
which is pretty impressive.
The English RFU are also running a Facebook campaign - uploading a rather limp (sorry guys) video to YouTube with the objective of driving as many fans to the RFU Facebook site as possible. The hook is to get more Facebook fans than the Welsh. As much as it pains me to say it - it’s a bit 2008, even as an Englishman I find it hard to engage with what is a non-story.
The real innovation is taking place elsewhere.
02 are showing several games in 3D at various Odeon cinemas. I blogged about 3-D and this AIS campaign last week - I’ll be interested to hear the feedback on the fan experience.
Another innovative campaign was brought to my attention in
the Contagious Magazine Newsletter. Contagious reported that Gilbert and
Guinness have placed RFID (Radio Frequency ID) chips inside each Rugby ball (I
assume this only at Ireland games), and using sensors placed around the pitch
they can monitor players and ball movement to identify the number and distance
of passes ... all fascinating stuff.
Guinness have supported this initiative with a rather
futuristic Nike or Adi-esque TV ad, driving viewers to an Area (22) on the Guinness
website.
Area22 contains all the geeky and engaging RFID information such as number / percentage of tackles and passes. From what I understand, to access you must identify Ireland as your country of origin at the log in page.
There
is also an Area22 Facebook page with aggregated content from the major Irish news
sources and competitions etc.
A well pulled together campaign that brings each Ireland game to life online, creating fan engagement and generating PR-able media stories for on and offline usage.
