The Vancouver Olympics and the 2010 World Cup have been watershed events in the evolution of sports and entertainment marketing strategy in the digital era, as new technologies enable increasingly compelling ways for brands to engage fans following these events, and living their lives, simultaneously online and off line. A fascinating feature of this has been the rise of the iPhone app that, out of nowhere, becomes a cult phenomenon around mega events.

Around Vancouver 2010, memorably, it was the cowbell app. Leveraging the tradition in winter sports to ring a cowbell on the slopes to encourage the athletes, various developers created apps which turned your iPhone into a ringing cowbell. It was a popular feature of Coca-Cola’s NBC Olympic Cheer app, and Vancouver 2010  sponsor Bell released its own free version in Canada. But the biggest winner was Boulder-based Rage Digital’s 99-cent unbranded Cowbell2010 app, which users could personalize with their national flag: it generated some serious media coverage, including a namecheck by Christopher Walken on Saturday Night Live, was downloaded by people in 34 countries, and became the most popular paid sports application in the App Store.

Around the 2010 World Cup, there are already some brilliant apps out there. I love The Sun Sweepstake Shaker, created by our Engine partners WCRS, enabling fans to run their own World Cup office sweepstake. And I’m also a big fan of the very funny KitKat Red Card app, developed by Skive and branded by KitKat as part of its sponsorship of Sky’s World Cup coverage.

But I’m betting that the World Cup’s left-field equivalent of the Vancouver cowbell app phenomenon will be the vuvuzela. Unknown to the wider world unfamiliar with South African football, the sound of the vuvuzela will be a defining feature of this World Cup, and one I’m sure fans around the world will want to download and share. There are already six vuvuzuela apps out there, each backed by some smart marketing, in particular by Aculocity, developers of the Virtual Vuvuzela app. Try Tweeting ‘vuvuzela’ and you’ll see what I mean.