The new adidas f50 miCoach is the first ‘boot with a brain’. The new boot integrates a miCoach Speed Cell into a cavity in the sole which captures and records 360 degree movements and key personal performance metrics.
The boots capture data including speed, average speed, maximum speed, number of sprints, distance, distance at high intensity levels and active training time, which it then transmits to tablets, PCs and Macs using a wireless link.
The miCoach internet platform allows players to upload, track, analyse and share their miCoach data. Once the sole preserve of sophisticated GPS systems, this allows any park player to monitor their performance, identify areas of improvement and compare their stats to those of their mates, teammates and the real professionals.
And as each player improves their performance on the real pitch, they reap the benefits on the virtual one. ‘Avatars’ (virtual personas) take part in a new social football video game – and the only way to build your avatar’s skills and level up is by doing the work in the real world. ‘Gamification‘ is a great way to engage this target audience and adidas have nailed it.
This is the biggest innovation in football boots since adidas launched the Predator. But, with its integrated digital and social elements, this will have a far broader and deeper impact.
For the first time, it gives every player the ability to analyse their own performance, track improvements and compare themselves to not only their mates, but also some of the greatest players on the planet. It is this integration of both professional and amateur players and an accessible, easy-to-use platform, which incorporates social media, that creates a truly unique and engaging brand experience for the consumer.
By putting ‘performance’ at the core, adidas enhances their positioning as the world’s leading performance brand. No matter what your ability level is from occasional 5-a-side player to Lionel Messi, there is always room for improvement and adi will help you get there.
This ‘boot with a brain’ creates engaging content and puts adidas at the centre of a global dialogue around performance. It has brought together football’s elite level with its grassroots in a way that pushes the thought that adidas enables you to be the best you can be.
What the brand says
The adidas vice president of global football, Markus Baumann, says ‘We have been working to develop a boot with a brain for some time and what we have produced will revolutionise the football industry.’ He goes on to say ‘What makes the boot unique is that for the first time you will be able to compare yourself to some of the best players in the world.’
It’s not news that we’re all watching TV whilst surfing the net, tapping away on our smartphones and engaging others in discussion around our favourite programmes (just log on to Twitter during X-Factor and Strictly!). What I’d like to applaud here is how broadcasters are taking this social engagement and building communities of loyal fans beyond the TV schedule.
Sunday night saw the last ever episode of the BBC’s thrilling MI5 drama Spooks. After nine years and 10 series it was time for the sliding doors of Section D to close for a final time. I knew I would probably be a little tearful and mourn that I’ll no longer swoon over the incredibly suave terrorist-fighting male cast, nor dream of emulating the leading ladies; however, what I absolutely loved was the show’s commitment to social engagement.
As an avid Tweeter, I was super-excited to find out during Series 9 that you could actually follow the characters on Twitter. The thing that they have got so right with these feeds is that they are active all year round (unlike @bbcLuther who only tweets when Luther is airing). Not only are they active but also attentive. They care about their followers and will take the time to respond to individual tweets.
First up, can you imagine my surprise (and delight) when @Dimitri_MI5 tweeted back to a message I sent about being excited about the final series starting…
I certainly *grinned* on receiving that back, but this was topped off by a response from the boss man himself @Harry_Pearce when I tweeted after the final episode…
I’ve honestly never felt more social media love than that and I’m sure anyone who has received a response or RT will be feeling the same way!
It’s great to see other dramas are taking a lead from Spooks, with ITV’s Downton Abbey creating profiles for all cast members – @LadyMaryCrawley is winning the followers race with over 1,700 at the time of writing. So when you’re watching on Sunday night, you know where I’ll be… wrapped up on the sofa with Blackberry in hand, tweeting away.
Online fashion retailer ASOS has continued its pioneering digital approach by utilising urban culture to promote its new 2011 Autumn/Winter menswear collection.
Through a new online experience, the ASOS Urban Tour uses an interactive platform to showcase its latest range, by zooming in on a variety of street performers including skaters, dancers and musicians, in five of the most stylish cities across the globe: London, Paris, Berlin, Los Angeles and New York.
Through an interactive scrolling map, similar to Google Earth, the application starts with a bird’s eye view of the globe and then zooms into the streets within your chosen city. The real funs starts when you click on any of the dancers, skaters or musicians who then start to perform. The interactive videos offer links for each of the performers and enable the user to see what they are wearing and how to purchase it.
Why we love it
Marketing something as personal and tactile as clothes in a two-dimensional online environment will always be a challenge. But ASOS continue to develop and push the boundaries, using engaging and innovative methods to showcase its clothing ‘in action’. This cutting-edge campaign, which combines lifestyle aspirations and fashion, represents a natural progression from the successfully executed online catwalk concept.
Research undertaken indicates that male consumers being targeted by ASOS are influenced in their fashion choices by what they see being worn on the streets, and therefore partnering with inspirational urban talent offers a fresh and relevant approach for the online retailer.
Urban Tour has been supported with extensive social media presence via the official ASOS Facebook page which currently boasts over one million ‘likes’. Inter-city rivalry has been utilised to spark conversation via an online poll, simply asking fans which city is their favourite – London currently sits at the top with 1,381 of the 2,895 votes. Fashion bloggers globally have been going crazy for this ‘mind blowing’ digital offering, describing it as an “entirely fresh and truly incredible experience.” So for those of you fashion-conscious men not making it to any London Fashion Week shows, I suggest you get your fix of urban style here!
On Sunday 18th September, 54,000 runners took part in the world’s largest half marathon, the Bupa Great North Run. The Synergy team developed an integrated campaign to enhance the race experience for runners, spectators and the watching world. The runner experience was developed, with both physical and emotional support throughout their race journey from training and preparation, to the race experience itself.
Socialising the Bupa Great North
The big challenge for 2011, was to connect the amazing runner experience with a broader audience. The Bupa Great North Run has had incredible human interest stories since its inception in 1981; today the displays of human endeavour are more powerful than ever. With this insight at its heart, Synergy developed a simple, yet enormously powerful social media campaign to provide non-runners with an opportunity to feel part of the race experience of 54,000 runners.
The campaign was designed to connect consumers with the emotions of runners, utilising Bupa ambassador Mo Farah. Mo laid down the challenge to the nation, requesting messages of support to inspire Great North Runners on race day.
This was all delivered through the Bupa Running social media community on Facebook and Twitter. Over 400 of the best messages were then selected and used to design a giant ‘Mo Farah Mural’.
Mo unveiled the mural at the Bupa Great North Show in front of thousands of fans and gathered media the day before the race. Coverage included: Daily Telegraph, Evening Standard, CNN, BBC Look North, ITV Tyne Tees and BBC Radio Newcastle.
Race Day
The mural was then integrated throughout the Bupa race day experience, including the now legendary Bupa Boost Zone. Alongside the installation of the Bupa sports physio and massage experience, elated runners were able to celebrate their Bupa Great North Run alongside Mo Farah, and take in the emotive messages of support from across the UK on the Mo Farah Mural.
Three cheers, then, to the IRB for publishing a weekly round-up of Rugby World Cup-related social media activity by fans. As I tweeted yesterday, all rights holders should be doing this – a point echoed by numerous sponsors, who contacted me to say they’d now be making the same point to the rights holders with which they contract.
I’ve always been uncomfortable with the IRB describing the tournament as the world’s third biggest sporting event behind the Olympic Games and FIFA World Cup (which it routinely does – see the penultimate paragraph here for example).
It’s a very clever marketing soundbite (which many rugby journalists now routinely repeat) but it doesn’t stand up to detailed analysis.
The IRB anchors this claim primarily on those old chestnuts of cumulative TV viewers and TV footprint, but those are currencies which only matter to sporting officialdom: most brand marketers aren’t remotely interested in them as a measure of either audience engagement or value.
The reality is there’s a vast chasm on this notional list between the top two and the Rugby World Cup in terms of audience criteria that really matter to brands: things like the number of unique viewers, the number of fans engaging online, and the number of countries in which the event/sport has salience (mass appeal).
And against these more meaningful criteria, there are plenty of sporting events which have a bigger reach and/or footprint than the Rugby World Cup. To quote just a few examples, the F1 World Championship, the Indian Premier League, the NFL, and the UEFA Champions League.
And none of this should be a surprise because when you consider rugby’s footprint.
It’s salient in only eight major markets (the IRB Tier 1 countries Argentina, Australia, England, France, Ireland, Italy, New Zealand, South Africa) with a combined population of 309 million (4.4% of the world’s population) in only one of which (New Zealand, the smallest market at 4 million) it is the number one sport.
All of which is illustrated nicely by this IRB infographic, showing the location of the last 1,000 Tweets mentioning #rwc2011 during the Rugby World Cup opening ceremony.
So, hat-tip to the IRB for blazing a social media trail among rights holders. But please, don’t play the ‘biggest’ game – play the best.
It would be remiss of us to ignore the social disturbance, unrest and rioting that wreaked havoc on the streets of London and around Britain in early August. What really struck a chord with us here at Synergy was the response of local communities to counter the destruction and rally together, specifically the role social media played in doing so.
Everyone will be au fait with images of Clapham’s broom wielding army lead by Commander-in-Chief, one B. Johnson, who set about cleaning up their local neighbourhood the day after the carnage. Organised by the very same social media sites that were at the heart of spreading the riots, communities gathered first virtually and then physically to start the clean up. Check out Jam’s infographic on the buzz created around the riots and the call for social change.
One of Engine’s other companies, Partners Andrews Aldridge, started a campaign called De-Loot London. Their mission was to make sure that not a single shop that was looted during the riots was forced to close as a result. By setting up a website with an interactive map, people can highlight local shops that most need their community’s support. Embracing the power of social media they established the #delootlondon hash tag for people to share amongst their friends.
Why we liked it?
Firstly they acted fast, the campaign was up and moving within days of the looters running riot. This allowed people to act quickly and really feel as though they could make a difference to their local community.
Secondly, social media was at the heart of the campaign and provided the online community with a mechanism to make a difference to their own physical communities. Brands often talk about building a community of advocates, fans or followers and this campaign tapped into a passion point. It turns out that people are passionate about keeping local businesses afloat in the face of adversity.
Thirdly, it was philanthropic, and after fear and uncertainty spread across London it reassured the population that good people are out there…and there are lots of us!
Finally, the riots may not be headline news any more, but local communities will need long term support. De-Loot London already has 1,900 Facebook fans, so keep the campaign going by sharing your support here.
Like the vast majority of sports fans watching the events unfold at Royal St George’s, I found myself willing a Darren Clarke victory – this despite a fairly uneducated £5 pre-tournament punt on Phil Mickelson. The emotional pull of seeing a people’s champion claim the Claret Jug was stronger than the rational tug of reversing my losing streak on Betfair. Sport has a particular ability to evoke strong emotions through its personal stories of courage, inspiration and determination, through its inherent unpredictability, excitement and drama.
Those emotions are an essential component of successful sponsorship – and are as relevant across other sponsorship platforms (music, film, fashion, art) as they are in sport. How often do we hear rights holders, brands and sponsorship agencies (guilty as charged) talk of ‘engaging consumers through their passion points’ to justify sponsorship investments? It has become the de facto rationale. But what substantiates that principle, and are sponsors embracing it to make a genuine connection with consumers?
Shared Passions
The stated ambition of many sponsors is to create that emotional connection with their target audience through a shared passion. The theory goes that an emotionally engaged audience – whether they are football fanatics, art lovers, bog snorkelling aficionados, or Gaga’s ‘little monsters’ – is an audience that will be more receptive to brand messages, and more likely to think positively about a brand associated with their passion.
Sound thinking or codswallop? Well, there is plenty of research supporting the notion that the higher a consumer’s emotional engagement with an event, the more effective their recall of sponsors. If you want proof, just read Bal, Pascale and Plewa’s research study in the Sept 2009 Journal of Sponsorship (Volume 2, Number 4). Or take my word for it. Their analysis of the emotional response elicited by a sponsorship event confirmed what we would probably all take as read – that ‘positive sport-related emotions contribute to sponsorship efficiency, favouring the recognition of sponsors’. Which makes sense – an emotional experience is more likely to crystallise into memory than an experience without emotion. I remember where I was when Wilkinson dropped THAT goal in 2003 with patriotic emotions riding high, but have no recollection where I watched the 2010 World Cup Final as an impartial observer.
Sponsor Engagement
But how do sponsors get in on the act, and stake a claim to those memories? Being visible within a passion point might increase the chances of being in a consumer’s mind, but it doesn’t win a place in their hearts. There has to be active emotional involvement, not just proximity or visibility. Engagement not impressions. Too many sponsors assume that an increased awareness of their sponsorship, and that magical associative power alone, will alter consumer perceptions. Perimeter boards, media backdrops, shirt sponsorships and the like certainly have a reinforcing role to play, but I’m yet to hear a sponsor say “that perimeter board really helped me emotionally connect with my target audience”. The abundance of advertising we are seeing in the run up to 2012 that says ‘I’m an Olympic sponsor’ is failing to tap into the rich emotional tapestry of the Olympics.
So what should sponsors do to capitalise on their consumers’ emotions beyond just ‘being at the party’? To start with there needs to be some sense of brand relevance to the passion point. How else can a brand claim to ‘share’ that passion? Authenticity could be driven by brand characteristics, product relevance, company heritage, or geography. Lack relevance, and brands risk looking as incongruous as Budweiser’s relationship with that king of soccer competitions, the FA Cup. The central thought in Neill Duffy’s book Passion Brandingis another worthwhile principle: leverage the relationship between a brand and its consumers around a consumer passion to create value for all involved in the relationship. Sponsors need to think beyond their brand to deliver a benefit for consumers – be that entertaining content, a unique experience or simply a memorable emotional pay-off.
Many brands are successfully engaging consumers on an emotional level, in a relevant passion point, and contributing to their enjoyment of that passion. Some capitalise on a moment of high emotion, some tap into the core emotional sensibility of the passion point. Whether anchored in anticipation, pride, patriotism or celebration, they all exhibit genuine empathy and understanding. A few examples below…
In the build up to the 2006 FIFA World Cup, Carlsberg’s Old Lions campaign tapped into England fans’ anticipation of the tournament through a nostalgic lens and a pitch perfect creation of pub football camaraderie.
Fast forward four years to the 2010 FIFA World Cup, and Coca-Cola’s activation single-mindedly focused on football’s moment of greatest emotion – celebrating a goal. From reliving the greatest celebrations in World Cup history, recording a World Cup celebration song, to touring the FIFA World Cup around the globe, they fuelled fan emotion with the ‘What’s your Celebration’ campaign.
Talking of celebration, O2’s Rugby World Cup victory parade in 2003 gave rugby fans the opportunity to express their support, their joy and their pride to the returning heroes. Not only that, O2 armed all England players with mobile cameras to record the experience and share it with consumers, and gave some lucky fans the chance to win a place on the parade bus.
But not all emotional engagement is grounded in joy and positivity. Bupa’s activation of their Great North Run focuses on the participants’ moments of greatest physical and emotional need. The Bupa Boost Zone at the typical ‘low’ point for runners 80% through the race, and at the finish, provides massages, sustenance and music to inspire and re-energise runners.
What next?
Social media is making the emotional engagement opportunities around sponsorship that much more immediate, and much more of a dialogue opportunity. The response to celebratory moments in particular is now fairly instantaneous, and can propel brands to the heart of the emotional moment. Harness the emotions correctly, and your consumers will add the catalyst of conversation. After all, people are more likely to talk about things that illicit an emotional response. As a final plea to sponsors, I defer to Mark Harrison, Chair of the Canadian Sponsorship Forum:
‘You can’t manufacture emotion. It’s already there. When you find it – just find a way to trigger it; tap into it; fuel it; and watch it grow into something remarkable.’
Oakley‘s immersion into athletic eye wear began in 1980, when the company released its first model of motorcycle goggles. Dubbed the “O-Frame,” the goggle consisted of an arced cylindrical lens that would eventually become the brand’s hallmark. Over the last 30 years, Oakley has been awarded more than 600 patents and developed, through strategic sponsorship, enviable relationships with sport’s elite.
The first professional athlete to be sponsored by Oakley was the three-time winner of the Tour de France, Greg LeMond, in 1984. Since then, Oakley has sponsored a diverse range of leading sportspeople. The most notable of which, Lance Armstrong, has been with the brand since 1988. Here he is in the current Oakley Rebellion campaign.
In the Rebellion campaign, Oakley positions itself as a brand that is built on being against the status quo, against conventional thinking and against underachieving. It is this attitude that Oakley looks to share with its athletes so as to emphasise the credibility of this positioning.
To dovetail this Rebellion campaign, Oakley Europe has kept innovation at the forefront of their mind by launching its ‘You Vs’ digital campaign. The goal of this innovative social media campaign is to build Oakley’s European Facebook community while creating awareness about the Oakley athletes. We think it’s been done brilliantly!
What happened?
‘You Vs’ takes viewers inside the world of professional sport by putting ‘you’ against the Oakley pro athlete. The videos, which viewers are directed to after ‘liking’ Oakley on Facebook, have been filmed in a point-of-view style and allows viewers to compete against the athlete. The fact that the film plays through Facebook, ensures each viewer enjoys a personalized experience with their name and profile pictures appearing at key narrative points. This personal touch creates a sense of individuality and elitism that resonates strongly with Oakley.
The first experience has been created with world champion cyclist Mark Cavendish. In this challenge the user gets to race against Mark through Italy’s beautiful Tuscan hills. The interactive film allows the viewer to make ‘live’ decisions that affect the outcome of the race, from how to take corners to when to start the final sprint.
Oakley eyewear is also integrated into the decision-making, allowing fans to select different lenses at the start of the challenge and custom-build a pair of frames at the end of the experience, bringing them closer to the world of professional sportsmen.
Other experiences will be released over the next six months with Oakley athletes including Kevin Pieterson, Ian Poulter, Janko Tipsarevic and Sebastien Loeb. These videos will be timed to coincide with major sporting events, having started with Mark Cavendish and the Tour de France.
Why we like it
We like the ‘You Vs’ digital campaign because it gives us the chance to challenge some of the world best sportsmen. More importantly, it offers us insight into the key decisions that athletes are continuously making when competing. It is these decisions that end up separating first and second place, but it is very seldom that fans are exposed to the stragic side of sport. This campaign by Oakley now enables the everyday athlete, who is usually constricted to shouting ‘advice’ at their TV, the opportunity to experience competing against the world’s elite and making those all important decisions.
Oakley has planned the release of the films to coincide with high profile sporting events throughout the year. This has been done to encourage long term engagement and to allow fans from a particular sport to discover and develop an interest in other Oakley athletes.
This, together with the great cinematography, has produced an exciting campaign that has the potential to be shared by many on Facebook. As the campaign gathers momentum, so too will Oakley’s digital presence in Europe.
What the brand says
Tom Cartmale, marketing director for Oakley UK, commented: ‘As a technology driven brand Oakley has always invested in digital media and looked at new ways of engaging social media communities’. He continued to say, ‘Our aim is to create immersive brand experiences that engage a wide audience of sports fans, showcase our hero athletes and bring our products to life. We hope to build a significant Facebook community as a result and boost awareness of key product stories, in particular lens adaptability and customized frames’.
We feel that the innovative ‘You Vs’ campaign achieves exactly those goals and, after 61,000 Facebook likes, is already having the desired effect for Oakley.
Now I suggest you click here and give it a try for yourself. Let us know how you get on.
With the hot topic of getting more people of all ages active in the UK, a campaign produced by Nike in Amsterdam recently caught my eye that really injected ‘fun’ into running.
What happened?
At the end of last year, Nike began its Take Mokum campaign (Mokum being the nickname for Amsterdam). This campaign was launched in conjunction with the Nike Run House in Amsterdam and looked to blend running with creativity in a way that encouraged people to run. To emphasise this desired relationship between creativity and running, Nike, as the world’s leading running brand, bravely used the concept that ‘running is boring’ as the big idea to this campaign.
Now I agree with this concept that running is boring. I say this because running is an activity that the majority of people take up in order to achieve a desired goal, usually weight loss, improved fitness or improved health. It is very seldom that someone speaks of the fun they have when pounding the pavements of their city. The Take Mokum campaign therefore looked to create a different reason, away from health, for society to get running.
Nike identified the creative segment of society, the segment usually associated with self-expression through music (hip-hop), design and art (graffiti), as a segment that would be receptive to the idea of a new, fun ulterior motive to run. Nike decided to appeal to this segments passion of self-expression and sense of underground culture while encouraging them to get out on the streets running. This is how Take Mokum was born.
Take Mokum gave people the chance to create a graffiti image of a running route around Amsterdam. These images ranged from a butterfly to a skull and could be constructed and shared with friends across various social media platforms, including Facebook. Allow this video to explain Take Mokum to you.
Why we like it
We like Nike’s Take Mokum campaign due to its creative approach in appealing to the passion points of Amsterdam’s youth in order to encourage them to get running. Nike has successfully incorporated a fun and creative solution to a campaign that’s primary goal is to increase youth participation in inner city running. In doing so it has brought authenticity to the perception that Nike is not just a running brand, but rather a lifestyle brand that allows you to express the individual you are – all while sharing it with your friends on Facebook.
Over the six-week period that the campaign ran, 9,000 people signed up and the app achieved 14,500 Likes on Facebook. This may not sound that impressive initially but when considering that Amsterdam’s population is relatively small (767,000), and that the 9000 Take Mokum runners would have acted as Nike ambassadors, it creates, by immersing itself in the consumer’s world, engaging conversations both on and off line around the Nike brand.
Our relationships are all built on dialogue. Talking to each other, sharing ideas, working together, creating things, discovering new stuff, having fun, laughing, crying, flirting, arguing – everything that makes life worth living is built on our ability to actively engage with each other. Why should that be different from the relationships we build with the brands in our lives?
For most of its history, Marketing has been pretty much a one-way conversation – a kind of Orwellian 1984 scenario where brands tell you what they want you to know and the customer has no way of talking back (something Apple seemed to pick up on in their famous ad). Of course, that was primarily driven by the available marketing channels which didn’t give customers a voice.
But like the hammer in the Apple ad, the digital age, and particularly the social media age (rather than the Apple Macintosh), has smashed through the barrier separating brands from their consumers. And this starts to give us some fantastic examples of how brands are using these two-way channels to form deeper and more natural relationships with their customers.
Of course, there are lots of different roles for brands to play when fuelling this dialogue. They can engage directly with their clients, but they can also fuel the dialogue in more subtle ways by becoming an integral part of their customers’ own conversations. Either way, the principle is the same: give your customers a voice and enable them to have conversations with you and with each other.
Dialogue between your brand and the customer
There are many examples of brands engaging directly with their consumers. One common form is around customer service. Facebook and Twitter provide incredibly useful information about what customers really think about your brand. Look for it, listen to it and do something about it. When @interactiveamy’s pizza took over an hour to arrive, she vented her frustration on Twitter. When the General Manager Raymon DeLeon saw her tweet, this was his response. It’s a longish video – no need to watch the whole thing:
The famous Old Spice Man and Blendtec’s “Will It Blend” campaign are further examples of brands that respond to input from their customers with great results. And, of course, Tippex gives you the chance to have loads of fun with their Bear in the Woods.
‘Crowdsourcing’ – actively soliciting ideas from you customers and doing something with them – is another form of dialogue which works for more than just funny marketing campaigns.
General Electric Ecomagination is an open call to businesses, entrepreneurs, innovators and students to submit breakthrough ideas for energy creation, management and use. In addition to providing the ideas, the public also vote for their favourites. With a pledge to invest $200m along with GE’s technical expertise to bring the best ideas to market, this is one form of dialogue that could literally change the world.
Pepsi are doing something very similar with their Pepsi Refresh project. They are looking for ideas that will ‘Refresh the World’ with a similar commitment to funding the ideas that get the most votes from their consumers.
What is particularly strong about the Pepsi Refresh programme is how deep the conversations they facilitate flow. Not only have they created a powerful platform from which consumers can interact with the brand, the strength of the programme itself encourages consumers to build meaningful conversations with each other online, which grow into ‘real-world’ conversations (as individuals look to build momentum behind their own proposed initiatives), which culminates in a tangible legacy in an American community that consumers will talk about for years to come.
In a final example of engaging directly with your customers, Puma have just launched this Facebook App, which allows Spurs fans to play around with the design of their team’s 2011/2012 kit. Of course, it would be even better if the fans had some input into the final design of the kit rather than simply “guessing the design” – but surely that won’t be too far away. In fact, given the passion that football fans have for their team’s kit, and the ease with which they can speak to their fans, it is amazing that all kit manufacturers don’t get some form of fan input. Here’s what happens if you don’t: http://bit.ly/mzWVT3.
Inserting your brand into your customers conversations
In addition to speaking directly to customers, brands can get their customers to talk about them by giving them the content or platform to fuel the conversation.
How did a Turkish Mobile Network get mentioned in 56,750 tweets (topping the Turkish trending tables for 8 days), which reached approximately 3.6 million people (in an initiative that probably cost them less than £20,000)? Find out here.
Staying with mobile networks, Orange has also done a great job of creating a reason for fans to mention them. In this example, which works particularly well on the back of their film sponsorships, Orange will make sure that your tweets are read out in the style of a film voiceover. Go on, tweet your plans for this summer here. And then of course, share it with all your friends and followers, who will receive the Orange branding.
Guinness FanFinder used a similar technique during their sponsorship of the RBS 6 Nations. They published a massive picture of the crowd at various matches and encouraged people to find and tag themselves and their friends. With over 5,000 snap shots posted to walls via the Facebook App and an average of 130 Facebook friends per person that’s some more pretty good exposure for Guinness.
In an attempt to encourage dialogue around their new album, the Kaiser Chiefs kicked off a “create your own Kaiser Chiefs album” campaign for their latest album, The Future Is Medieval. Music fans get to pick out 10 songs from 20 of Kaiser Chiefs songs listed online, create their own album cover, buy it and then sell it online. To make it even better, for every sale of their album they will receive £1. Whilst socially engaging this campaign also pushes power onto the consumer removing them from their traditional role of purchasing products into the role of producer, giving them the chance to create their own product and sell it on to others. Thus creating a tangible benefit for the consumer for positive dialogue about the Kaiser Chiefs brand.
Finally, in a brilliant piece of work by our sister agency Jam, Samsung added considerable spice to the dialogue between tech bloggers and their audience via their “Extreme Unboxing” series of videos.
In all of these examples, the brands found an authentic role for themselves and encouraged conversations between communities with a common interest.
Where does sponsorship fit in to all this
So what does this all mean for sponsorship? The answer is simple: passion. People want to talk about the things that they really care about. With all due respect to most brands, your customers are unlikely to care as much about you as they are do about sports, music, film, art, technology, the environment or activity in their community (to name but a few). So, if you want to start a conversation with your customers, talking about something that they are really interested in is a good place to start. And finding a shared passion with your customers is, of course, at the very heart of what sponsorship is all about.
In many ways, this blog goes hand in hand with the brilliant piece on Content written by Ben in last month’s Synopsis (definitely read it if you haven’t already) because the key to stimulating this dialogue is great content. But, what I hope this blog makes clear is that creating great content and putting it in the right places is not enough. It is then all about opening up the channels and fuelling the conversations that make life so interesting.
Principles of Dialogue
Listen to your customers, learn what they care about and value their contribution. Actively open up two way communication channels
Find an authentic role for your brand (a reason for you to be there) and don’t overstep your bounds
Think about whether it makes more sense to talk with your audience directly or to get them to talk about you
Remember, this is about your shared passion – not about you
Have fun and be creative – remember engaging with other people is what makes life fun
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