Digital Connections

Apple takeover Skysports.com on #WorldCup2018 day

On the day that England were subjected to another World Cup humiliation, I quite liked this smart media-buy from the chaps at Apple.

A cool takeover of the SkySports homepage, on what even by SkySports standards must have been a high traffic day.

 

Shame that people clicked through to read about massive disappointment - but if we'd won then the mediabuy would have have been a stroke of genius.

Made even better as it only works on Google Chrome and Firefox - leaving Internet Exporer in the cold (ha).

Nice creative, smart mediabuy, shame about the result.

(Also a shame that I'd just done a Google search on Blake's 7 before recording)

Great World Cup SMS Infographic (c/o O2 & Wired)

Building on my England World Cup infographic post from last Saturday, here's another England / World Cup infographic. 

 

Taken from an interesting article from @NateLanxon at Wired magazine, showing SMS usage around England's World Cup games - perfectly illustrated in infographic form. (If anybody gets a higher res version please nudge me).

During England’s Group C matches, O2 users sent just over 75,000,000 text messages - with usage peaking at 4k-5k texts immediately after England's goals.

Sport is inherently social and its best served live and with shared real time experiences, it’s all about “The Power of Now”. First choice mode of carriage for major sport is always on TV, sharing and analysis then happens on the most convenient platform, in this case mobile. As a gregarious and social race, we instinctively and immediately want to share our appreciation of the “awesome” with our closest friends.

(On the flip side SMS traffic looks highest during England Algeria - but I think we can put that down to boredom)

Infographic of England's Group C passing at 2010 World Cup

Some folk love fonts and robots, I'll confess that I love nothing better than a good infographic. Sports infographics are therefore awesome, and World Cup infographics about England send me into a total frenzy.

The chaps over at lainformation.com are a particularly good source of infographics, a Spanish version of The Guardian I guess.

Like many other people in marketing & advertising I find myself thinking in pictures rather than words, and find that a great visual or infographic can bring a subject immediately to life and quickly get point across.

The three infographics (c/o La Information) below, show England's player to player passing during their group games at the 2010 Fifa World Cup against Slovenia, Algeria and USA.

I suspect that most readers actually watched the games, in which case I'll leave you to analyse and draw your own conclusions from each of the three images.

England v Slovenia (England played well)

 

England v Algeria (played shite)

 

England v USA (played ok in parts)

 

Gregarious creatures and the World Cup "fail whale"

Hello, it's been a while,

Working on lots of exciting projects at Fast Track has resulted in me being pretty quiet on this blog for the past month or so. If you've been trying to get hold of me then you've probably received my "over capacity" reply, as I've been tied up with the FIFA World Cup (read more here) and London 2012 projects.

And chances are that if you've been on Twitter over the past few weeks then at some point you've probably also been hit by their over capacity replay, aka the "Twitter Fail Whale", as the social media platform has been creaking under the volume of conversation around the World Cup.

 

Even Twitter have admitted that June has been Twitter’s worst month as the  platform undergoes structural changes to address record tweeting and account creations.

"We’re working through tweaks to our system in order to provide greater stability at a time when we’re facing record traffic. We have long-term solutions that we are working towards, but in the meantime, we are making real-time adjustments so that we can grow our capacity and avoid outages during the World Cup."

The FIFA World Cup is a great example that sport is inherently social, best served live and paired with real time social communication. The first choice mode of engagement is always TV, the second choice is a social platform. In the past this social platform was mainly the pub or the home, but now opinion sharing and analysis is occurring on the most convenient platform (Twitter, Facebook) whether thats online or mobile.

In the view of Karl Marx, "Human beings are intrinsically, necessarily and by definition social beings who, beyond being "gregarious creatures", cannot survive and meet their needs other than through social co-operation and association."

When it comes to World Class sport we still instinctively and immediately want to instantly share our appreciation of the “awesome” with our social circles.

I guess this is just another fine example of how "Technology Changes People Don't" ... 

 

My World Cup: Noel Gallagher

Over the coming months I'll be blogging about the "2010 FIFA World Cup South Africa", to give the tournament its official title.... the World Cup to the rest of us.

I'll be looking into and analysing how the tournament sponsors are activating their sponsorships online, and how brands are ambushing the tournament in style. A sort of World Cup watch - if you see anything of note then please drop me a line.

Anyway, as part of my reasearch I spotted this interview with Noel Gallagher, not a brand in sight but an interesting watch nonetheless.