Digital Connections

One Little Tweet Can Go A Long Way

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!

The latest Digital Connections newsletter, but on a blog

A belated Happy New Year everyone!

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.

BBC SPOTY 2010 & Google Insights: A Wrap Up

Unfortunately Google Insights didn’t prove to be an accurate crystal ball for the 2010 BBC Sports personality of the year, unlike in 2009.

The award was won by AP McCoy with Phil Taylor second and Jess Ennis third. In fact Jess’ third place was the closest that Google Insights came to predicting the winner, with a late significant surge in the number of Ennis related searches on Friday and Saturday.

Google’s “interest” in David Haye, and Graeme Swann proved to be a pair of red herrings, and Google’s lack of interest in AP McCoy (and Tony McCoy) and Phil Taylor proved equally inaccurate.

Twitter fared somewhat better, on Sunday night (albeit during the show); Taylor, Haye and Ennis were "trending" in the UK – but nothing registering for AP McCoy.

After the programme @HonestFrank released the SPOTY voting figures..

1     AP McCoy                293,152  (41.98%)
2     Phil Taylor             72,095     (10.33%)
3     Jessica Ennis         62,953     (9.02%)
4     Lee Westwood        58,640     (8.4%)
5     Graeme McDowell    52,108    (7.46%)
6     Tom Daley              50,763    (7.27%)
7     Mark Cavendish       44,170     (6.33%)
8     Amy Williams         43,056     (6.17%)
9     Graeme Swann        13,767     (1.97%)
10    David Haye             7,538     (1.08%)

A runaway winner it seems, which didn’t even flick Google’s needle.

On the other hand at Google Insights can be used to get something right. #uksnow

And the Winner of the 2010 BBC Sports Personality of the Year (according to Google Insights) is...

Last year I wrote a post about whether "Google Insights for Search" could accurately predict the BBC's Sports Personality of The Year.

And guess what, it did!

@Worldhood even slapped a tenner on Ryan Giggs AT 2-1 making himself a tidy profit - as the bookies had lined up Jenson Button.

So could Google Insights predict the SPOTY winner for a second year in a row?

According to Google, Mark Cavendish (again), AP McCoy, Amy Williams, Phil "The Power" Taylor and Graeme McDowell – have all had great years but Google is saying ... "its not you".

The BBC announced the nominations on the 29th November; however this wasn't followed by an immediate spike for any athlete. However we can see two significant spikes over the past two weeks.

The first for David Haye and the second for Graeme Swann.

Graeme Swann's popularity can probably and safely be put down to the Ashes, just as last year Andy Murray's spike was down to the ATP finals.

David Haye's spike is also interesting - however this also coincides with his ringside presence at last weekend’s Amir Khan fight and subsequent interviews and rumours surrounding a potential fight with either of the Klitschko brothers.

Lee Westwood has also been in the news this week due to his battle with Tiger Woods to be World number one, and this may be behind his upturn after the 12^th December.

Rather annoyingly the bookmakers massively confuse the issue as their favourites are virtually the exact opposite to Google Search results.

So I guess this year’s conclusion is that it’s too difficult and confusing to call.

Pure data would suggest (and wrongly in my opinion) David Haye, but the most natural Google searches seem to be around the rather unlikely winner of Tom Daley.

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UPDATE @ 18.57pm on Sunday 19th December

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Ran the search again on Sunday evening before the start of the programme and the past 24 hours has seen a massive increase in the number of Google searches for Jessica Ennis. (see below)

Is this sudden burst in searches going to identify the winner??? Lets see.....

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)

Chasing Legends ...

I'm really looking forward to going to see "Chasing Legends" next Thursday.

‘Chasing Legends’ documents the intense journey through the most arduous bike race on the planet, the Tour de France, and follows the story of the 2009 Team HTC-Columbia from the Monaco Prologue into the Pyrenees, via the Alps and finally into Paris. Narrated by Phil Liggett, the film features a cast of the sport’s most venerated heroes, including Eddy Merckx and Lance Armstrong, as well as stars of today including George Hincapie and Jens Voigt.

The film delves into the rich history, passion and true grit of The Tour, as seen through the eyes of Team HTC-Columbia and protagonist sprinter Mark Cavendish, and shows the highs, lows, triumphs and tragedies of those that make it through three long weeks of blood, sweat and tears to the fanfare and glory that awaits on the Champs Elysees.

Using totally original footage and a stunning array of HD cameras mounted on bikes, cars, helicopters and helmets, Chasing Legends takes viewers inside the pro peloton on a roller coaster ride of action, history and emotion. The movie tracks the humble but no-less heroic origins of ‘Le Tour’, from the inaugural 1903 event to what has become the modern-day epic, turning Team HTC-Columbia ‘inside out’ during the 2009 Tour.

Its a one off showing and sold out in most London Cinemas - but I think there are still some for Fulham and Wandsworth. The trailer looks awesome!!

Oct-21   

Odeon Covent Garden    8:00 PM    www.odeon.co.uk   
Empire Leicester Square   8:00 PM    www.empirecinemas.co.uk   
Cineworld Fulham Road    8:00 PM    www.cineworld.co.uk   
Cineworld Wandsworth    8:00 PM    www.cineworld.co.uk   
Cineworld Greenwich The O2    8:00 PM    www.cineworld.co.uk

List of national venues are here ..

Brilliance from Des Lynam and the BBC at the 1982 Commonwealth Games

As our heads turn towards the 2010 Commonweath Games in Dehli, we shouldn't forget the golden years of sport. The days before Sky Sports, when the BBC and Des Lynam reigned supreme.

Here's the introduction to BBC's Breakfast with Brisbane, way back in 1982.

We may laugh at the production quality, but an opening and classic one liner from Des remains timeless ....

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.

Lionel Messi: He didn't have the hand of god, just his feet.

Fantastic example of simple and strong ad copy by DDP Paris,

..brought to attention by the chaps at Ads Of The World.

Advertising Agency: DDB Paris, France
Copywriter: Olivier Lefebvre

Creative Director: Alexandre Hervé
Art Director: Benjamin Marchal
Illustrator: Monsieur Barbe
Published: December 2009