Back in the 70's and even early eighties, I remember footballers acting like real people. You'd bump into them on the street, some even on public transport - and quite often they would say hello and chat to fans and locals. In the late 70's I met Peter Withe at a bus stop, a modern footballer probably doesn't know where his nearest bus stop is.
The flood of money into the game changed a lot, and with it the vast majority of footballers heads vanished up their own arses. Footballers have disappeared from everyday life, only seen behind tinted windows, electric gates and posturing in VIP areas of nightclubs.
Social media has changed that, a handful of players are using Twitter very well and are using it to connect with fans - albeit on their own terms. But its not all about Rio Ferdinand or Robbie Savage. Take this example from Newcastle United right back Danny Simpson, he will have made this girl's week - and with one tweet he's put a spring in her step and sold a nufc season ticket to boot!
Once or twice a month, I send out a Digital Connections newsletter to a few subscribers. As a quick test I've posted the latest version as a blog post. Unsure whether I'll keep on doing this - but if you'd like it in your inbox then it would be great if you subscribed. The box should be somewhere on your right ---->
Digital Connections Newsletter #2
Apparently the brief for Rio's 2016 Olympic logo was to "Transmit Olympic values and attributes, to reflect the local culture, to project the city and country's image, to assure universal understanding as well as be current until the actual Games, along with many other considerations." In which case why should we be surprised that it's another wishy washy Olympic logo? More here
An intriguing football supporter infographic map of London, pulled together by a graphic designer using data from footballderbies.com and a bit of guesswork. It first did the rounds on Twitter but was picked up by Wired Magazine.
I love this concept -> Nike's designers are now designing kit to make American Footballers look faster. The colorways are meant to bring your eyes to the fastest moving parts of the player's bodies -- the hands, and in particular the shins, which move twice as fast as the thighs do while running.I wonder how long this will take to cross over to mainstreams sports and teams?
This visualization did the rounds a couple of weeks ago - but its still awesome. Using data from 10million people (2% of Facebook users) of the connections between friends on Facebook, Paul Butler an (amazingly talented) intern at Facebook has created a remarkable map of the world tracking conversations.
Unless you've been hiding under a rock, you wont fail to have heard the story about Ryan Babel the Liverpool footballer who posted a picture of referee in a Manchester United Shirt. Plenty has been written but for me this "Twitter Ye Not" article by the BBC's John Sinnott was the pick of the bunch. And by the way Ryan Babel's photoshop skills aren't too shabby either!!
I'm really liking Google Realtime at the moment. It's a good tool to monitor breaking stories on Twitter. I've used it this week to keep an eye on the Spurs v West Ham "Olympic Stadium" conversations. Interesting to see when the story broke & see how conversation has changed over the days.
If the England Football Team were a car, they would be a ... Vauxhall follow up their sponsorship of England with similar but smaller deals with the Welsh and Northern Irish football associations. Sports Pro article here
An attempt by Nike to get across Nike's CSR message - Not quite sure whether I believe any of it - but its a really nice example of an HTML 5 microsite. www.nikebetterworld.com
Finally, an interesting article in the Guardian covering the Office of Fair Trading's investigation into Celebrities endorsing products on Twitter. One to keep an eye on as there will obviously be an impact on the sponsorship industry.
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.
One week away from Vancouver 2010 Winter Olympics and the
expected confusion around the use of Social Media has started.
Back in September the IOC released their blogging guidelines around the 2010 Winter Games in Vancouver. And if I'm honest they looked devilishly difficult to
interpret, with many grey areas.
The guidelines opened on a rather positive note...
"The IOC considers blogging, in accordance with these
Guidelines, as a legitimate form of personal expression and not as a form of
journalism."
The IOC then goes on to define a blog as basically an online
diary, and
"should not contain any interviews with, or stories about,
other Accredited Persons".
.....So that would rule out a lot of
"@LanceArmstrong style" Tweets, in particular actual comment and analysis of
their days competition.
It also seems pretty clear that no moving images are allowed...
"The dissemination of moving images of the Games
through any media, including display on the Internet, is a part of the IOC’s
intellectual property rights. No sound or moving images (including sequences of
still photographs which simulate moving images) of any Olympic events,
including sporting action"
So I’m interpreting that would mean that a video embed
reporting on live sport from the Time website wouldn't be allowed on an athlete’s
blog?
And
"Accredited Persons may not use on their blogs the
Olympic Symbol - i.e. the five interlaced rings, which is the property of the
IOC."
I wonder whether an athlete could post this photo then?
(REUTERS)
It really starts to get even sticky when we get reach the
Advertising and Sponsorship section...
"As a general rule, Accredited Persons must not include
any commercial reference in connection with any Olympic Content posted on their
blogs. Specifically, this means that advertising and sponsorship opportunities
may not be offered and/or sold to third parties in connection with Olympic
Content contained in their blogs."
This is particularly tough, it means athletes can't blog if their personal blog contains images featuring non-Olympic sponsors. Now as virtually all athletes have sponsorship deals which feature non Olympic sponsors - this pretty much rules out blogging (remembering that Twitter is micro blogging).
Confused yet?
Well so are Lindsey Vonn, Nick Pearson and Team USA...
Here is Lindsay's Facebook profile ...
In 7 days time when the Winter Games start, if she updated her Facebook status then Lindsey wouldn't be allowed to use that profile picture as it features Sprint and Bed Bull, both non-IOC sponsors, and she would also need to remove the vast majority of her video and picture gallery.
This has prompted Lindsey to announce to her 35,000 fans that she will be stopping her Facebook updates and Twitter page until the Olympics are over, for fear of breaking IOC guidelines.
Similarly Nick Pearson (US Speedskater) has felt under the same pressure..
But Team USA think it’s OK to blog and Tweet, posting several updates advising Lindsey, Nick and other athletes that there is nothing to worry about.
The IOC, in trying to take Martin Sorrell's advice on board
Think like Your Customers
Create the rights franchise of content
Engage with the young in the right environments
Understand the technology opportunity
Think about what digital inventory you can offer sponsors and partners
and at the same time protect their own Olympic property; have instead created a bit of a blurry landscape.
Just as other business are working out where they fit within the New Economy, the same goes for Governing Bodies and Sports Rights Holders.
This social media story will develop over the coming weeks as the 2010Winter Games get underway, we've got a way to go yet.......
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.
Some really smart creative thinking from Forsman & Bodenfors, IKEA's Swedish agency.
They created a profile page for Gordon Gustavsson, the store manager of their brand new Malmo store, and then uploaded pictures of the store's new showrooms. Any friends who tagged a particular product with their name actually won the item.
And the campaign is rather nicely summarised in the video below.
All in all a rather clever innovative low budget campaign that drives conversation and sharability through Facebook's tagging feature - nice!
The latest thinker to contribute on Timeless Marketing Classics is Laurence Borel, Social Media Strategist, Blogger, Digital Junkie and "Frenchie in London", her words not mine!
And Lolly's picked a very interesting book - I've seen many people credit this book and incorporate its charts and concepts into presentations, yet rather strangely it hasn't been selected as a Timeless Marketing Classic ... until now ....
"I’ve been thinking about which book should be included in this
wonderful list over the past couple of weeks, and have finally settled
for THE social media bible, Groundswell.
Right now your customers are blogging about you, creating spoofs on YouTube, complaining about you on Twitter, and hating you on Facebook.
As a Brand Manager you can either a) get scared and quit your job, or
b) turn social media into an opportunity. I choose the latter…
Companies are increasingly turning to PR agencies (thank you for
keeping me employed!) to help them with their online WOM, and this book
should be on every bookshelf across the country
world. With Google soon to index Twitter updates, Social Media is
something that can no longer be ignored. Groundswell explains how
organizations need to adjust to remain relevant to consumers, and how
can they actually benefit from this trend.
Although the platforms we use may change in the years to come, web
2.0 marks an important shift in the way we use the Internet, and
communicate in our daily lives.
The search continues – what’s your Marketing Timeless Classic? Let
me know in the comments alternatively write a blog post linking back to Blog till you Drop."
If you're a member of the IPA (Institute of Practitioners in Advertising) then this will probably need no introduction, but if you're from the sports marketing industry or a non-IPA member agency then it might need a touch of background explanation.
The event had the potential to be great, and should have been great - unfortunately it wasn't. I blogged about the event and wrote a post which in hindsight I now view as overly harsh, and one that I certainly wouldn't write today.
However, I wasn't the only person who expressed disappointment, with Amelia, John, Robin and Anjali all expressing their views.
To give the IPA massive credit, within 7 days of the event Nigel Gwilliam (Head of Digital at the IPA) was analysing exactly where the IPA went wrong and how the IPA could ultimately deliver what their members wanted.
(I should point out that I wasn't and still am not a member of an IPA member agency, which goes someway to why I feel uncomfortable about my original post.)
Nine months later, Nigel has chaired and facilitated a very passionate & talented group of digital communications experts. This "IPA social" group have collaborated to write 10 principles that clients and agencies should bear in mind when developing Social Media campaigns. However, the group are also keen to point out that these principles are starting points for further discussion and are not cast in stone.
Each of the 10 principles are hosted on individual blogs (listed below), with the IPA acting as hub for the IPA Social Project, and everybody is encouraged to read and discuss the principles... after all social media is basically lots of people having conversations online.
Tuesday 6th October sees the IPA host a follow up event - which will see Mark Earls, Neil Perkin and Amelia Torode presenting their views, with Amelia, Katy Lindemann, Asi Sharabi and John Willshire joining in with a panel discussion.
If you're going along then drop me a tweet and say hello - if you cant make it then have a read of the 10 principles and join in the conversation online.
I was full of expectation nine months ago, and once again I'm full of expectation - but I know that these guys will absolutely nail it and add traction to a great debate.
This morning I was lucky enough to receive an invite from Google to preview Google Wave.
Which is absolutely fantastic news and the geek in me is pretty darn excited.
Although I must admit to feeling rather like that man with the first fax machine...
I've sent out my 8 invites to some friends and some fellow tweeters and bloggers (James, Neil, Amelia & John), but they are all currently awaiting delivery by Google.
"Invitations will not be sent immediately. We have a lot of stamps to lick."
In the meantime I'm sat Waving at my desk and sending out faxes to myself.
They’ve done a fantastic job, it’s as entertaining and insightful as previous versions & its great to see “Did You Know (Shift Happens)” evolve over time.
While I'm posting about The Economist, I just quickly want to hat tip the Economist team at AMV BBDO. They presented their IAB award winning work for Thinking Space at last weeks IAB creative showcase & I was pretty impressed.
