Social Sweat

Run Brits, Run - Nike Grid Jogs London

This fall, Nike re-launched GRID in London, their "real world" interactive running game which originally took place this past spring in support of the London Marathon.

With the aim of getting young people to identify as "runners" versus just running in their spare time, Nike turned the city streets of London into one giant game board.  Runners could register online, and then visit one of four phone booths in their postal code to dial a toll free number and get running directions to another phone booth check in depending on how far they wanted to run.

On the GRID website  a leader board highlighted individuals and allowed you to compare "teams" of runners (e.g. North London vs South London or a specific post code versus another.)  Over the coures of several weeks, Nike created daily competition videos featuring clever match ups like boys vs. girls and the runners vs. the tube strike.  (Though in some sort of weird social media fail, their YouTube page doesn't have an avatar, and the Facebook conversation manager has gone silent...)

During the April version of GRID, Nike played at the top and bottom of the funnel - engaging loyalists in the game play while spotlighting the activity to neighborhoods at large via digital out of home calls outs to leaders in each post code and other awareness building activities. 

Graeme Douglas of Wieden + Kennedy, the brains behind the operation, had this to say, "GRID is part of a growing category of ideas that sits within, as Tom Coates of Yahoo! describes, the 'real world web...connected things that blur the physical and virtual spaces--things that thrive primarily because they excite us as humans, rather than being a vehicle for demonstrating technical capability."

Overall, this sort of digital meets "IRL" meets gaming/entertainment concept seems like it could be the promised land when it comes to the true blending of mediums and interests - though I'd love to see an execution get beyond campaign think and truly sustain the experience.  And oh yeah, a US version of this would rock (that is if there are any phone booths left in America...)

Sweaty Q&A: In Purrsuit of Mike Mahoney

Guest Post by Edison Lee 

Senior Strategist, Ogilvy's 360°Digital Influence Group

 

As an adopted son of the Queen City (my fiancee is from there), I’ve been closely following the Charlotte sports scene and have enjoyed following Mike Mahoney (@Mahoney) of the Panthers on Twitter for his sports business insight.

Recently, Mike and Scott Hepburn (@scotthepburn) of Media Emerging launched the first “Panthers Purrsuit” event, a scavenger hunt competition that was designed to allow fans to directly engage with Panthers sponsors and community partners (and vise versa) by utilizing all the big social media platforms including FourSquare, Twitter, and Facebook. I wanted to learn more about the unique and innovative event so Mike took a few minutes out of his busy schedule to answer a few questions about the Purrsuit:

How did the Panthers Purrsuit come about?  Scott Hepburn of Media Emerging and I were having coffee talking about ideas when he told me about his “social media road rally” concept. He had talked with AAA of the Carolinas (who happens to be a Panthers sponsor) who had signed on to be a stop on the tour. He asked if I thought the Panthers would participate. I thought about the road rally being within our community of sponsors, and charity partners. I asked him if I could sell it to a sponsor, and the team would get behind it if we could work it together and we agreed that would be a great outcome.

How was the Purrsuit positioned to sponsors/partners?  We have some very active social media marketing folks in Charlotte and one of my accounts, Allen Tate had hired @genevievejooste a few months back. I took the idea to her and her boss. They were looking for another promotion to round out their sponsorship for 2010 and they asked some great questions but got behind the idea right away as the title sponsor. Our sponsorship team reached out to other sponsors and non-profits who were trying to build a social media presence and asked if they’d like to participate. Some would be spots on the Purrsuit and others (Budweiser and Bluegrass Promotional Marketing) signed on as sponsors. SportClips became a new partner of the team in part because of the Purrsuit and its potential.

What was the overall social media footprint of the Purrsuit?  The 32 teams were asked to mainly use Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube to post, tweet, and video their answers or record their challenges. There were 12 totals spots on the challenge including the start (stadium) and finish line (Bud After Party at Dandelion Market)

Additional figures from the event:

• 64: Contestants (including a group from the NFL league office in NY)
• 1,200: Tweets about sponsors on the day of the event
• 174,000: Total Twitter reach of contestants
• 908: Average number of Twitter followers for contestants
• 2.1 million: Estimated total Twitter impressions
• 1,000: Facebook photos posted to sponsors Walls
• 551: Average number of Facebook friends of participants
• 25,000: Total Facebook reach of contestants
• 1,275: Total YouTube channel views
• Purrsuit sponsors made up 60% of the Twitter "Trending Topics" list in Charlotte on 10/23
• Nine #purrsuit sponsors or participants made the local Twitter trending list on Saturday
• #Purrsuit was the top trending picture topic on Twitter on Saturday 10/23

What key takeaways did you take from the event?  We were thrilled with the creativity of the teams from pre-purrsuit announcement videos and team costumes and uniforms. The 32 teams were incredibly social media savvy. The numbers were pretty astounding:

Plans for next year?  We’ll be back next year, hopefully we will meet soon with the sponsors and make sure they were satisfied with the results and find out how to improve for year two. I could also see an multi-week event at a later date where fans can perform challenges on their timeframe in order to earn points.

Tiger Woods' Cigar Guy - Halloween Edition

You had to know that "Cigar Guy" was going to be a Halloween sensation. 

This photo, of Woods beaming a ball right at a Daily Mail photographer's camera gained steam in early October - and "Cigar Guy" (aka Rupa Ganguly) quickly became one of the top sports memes of all time thanks to Photoshop wizardry.  

Rupa was at the Ryder Cup in costume, paying homage to Miguel Angel Jimenez.

Fast forward three weeks and I'm willing to bet Cigar Guy was giving The Old Spice Guy a run for his money in the Halloween costume department.  Here's a shot of one of my brother's friends.  Did you spy any good Cigar Guys on Halloween?  Just scan the backgrounds of your photos...

ADD: Tony Kornheiser does Cigar Guy for Halloween PTI

New Zealand All Blacks Are Logged On

A great interview between Lewis Howes of Sports Networker and David Barton-Ginger, Social Media Manager for the New Zealand All Blacks Rugby team.

Intersting to see what's going on with major international clubs like the All Blacks - lots of similarities to issues faced by the one man social media operations of many US professional sports team organizations.

The middle of the interview concerning the All Balcks Facbook page is the sweet spot.  The club has nearly 600,000 fans in a country of 4MM, and is doing a lot with conversation management, unique athlete content (great videos - I'm a sucker for athletes suprising loyal fans), and leveraging partners like Adidas to do more with less.

Worth a watch.

Penn State's Project 7 Fills the Stands

Apparently Penn State students have a bit of a truency issue when it comes to football.  With the season 2/3 of the way over and the Nittany Lions fielding a decent squad, many were noticing that the student section was less than full at kick off.

A fan blog, View from the Stands, posted this picture of the student section just before kick off at the homecoming game versus Illinois.

Hailed the best student section in 2005, a group of students were fed up and took matters into their own hands.  Using Facebook, they organized Project 7, an effort to fill the student section before the 7pm kick-off of the Michgan game where they may or may not have beaten us 41-31.  The Facebook event reminded students "You have all day to party, but we've only got a few hours to show the nation why we're the best." 

The event page amassed more than 8,000 affirmative RSVPs, and rumor has it the section filled up somewhere between the first and second quarter.  Not exactly a "W" - but an "E" for effort.

NHL Hashtag Battle Dominates Twitter

Last Saturday, the Twitterverse turned its attention to a random, non-nationally televised NHL rivalry game - The LA Kings versus the Colorodo Avalanche.  Why?  Because the two teams were engaging in a hashtag smack down, pitting #GoAvs against #GoKings in an effort organized by Digital Royalty, a sports and entertainment social media marketing firm. 

The Hashtag Battle saw social grassroots (heavy Twitter promotion) combined with influencer engagement (outreach to popular bloggers and celebs) wrapped in a social good element (for each tweet $1 would be donated to the Children's Hospital of Los Angeles.)  Nice hat trick.

All in all, #GoAvs garnered 13,876 tweets while #GoKings generated 29,374. (Which is great, I like seeing the Avs lose at anything - still bitter about the Lemiux/Draper hit from behind in the '96 playoffs.)  #GoKings was a worldwide trending topic by the end of the first period, according to the Digital Royalty site.

I love programs like this because it adheres to my personal mantra - DO IT FOR THE FIRST TIME.  In social media if you're copying your dying - and the most innovate and talkable programs are ones that no one has ever done before.  They can be simple or complex, but they have to be a "first."  Hashtag Battle was brilliant for that reason.

Friday Funny: DrunkAthlete.com

Ever wonder where all of those pics of wasted athletes go to die?  Behold, DrunkAthlete.com. 

Conveniently organized by athlete OR by sport, DrunkAthlete.com is sports' answer to popular crowdsourcing sites like PassiveAggressiveNotes.com, Apostrophe Abuse and The "Blog" of "Unnecessary" Quotation Marks.

The Sports Week in Social Media - Oct. 21, 2010

After a hectic re-entry from last week's vacation, I didn't get in as much blogging as I'd have liked.  AND, since I'm off to Miami for my birthday weekend, this week's wrap is coming a day early.  We will return to regularly scheduled programing next week!

• NBA announces Turnstile, a custom location based network that will be integrated into their existing NBA app.  Effort is meant to tap excitement and passion of fans at the game, and the app will allow people to share their location across networks and have access to discounts, tips and exclusives.  Hey, this sounds kind of familiar....

• The NFL Players Association called down the thunder this week on three individuals who had registered "NFL Lockout" on Twitter and Facebook.  After behind the scenes negotiations with the group failed, the Union went to Twitter who ganked the name back under the guise of verified accounts, and gave the trio the oh so easy to remember handle @NFLLockout__ (yeah that would be not one, but two underscores.)  Both hanldes have less than 100 followers currently.

• Can the social media popularity of NBA teams predict their playoff success?  Tareq's Sports Blog takes a whack.  The correlation does not imply causation, but fun run down nonetheless.  

• The Fox vs. Cablevision face off is hitting fans where it hurts in the middle of the Phillies/Giants NLCS playoff series.  Last night, the FCC added some fuel to the fire by tweeting details of the game in an attempt to asuage Phillies fans in the black out area.  Needless to say, some "were less than impressed."  

 

Sweaty Question: Is espnW Good for Women's Sports?

Last week USA Today and The New York Times reported on espnW, a new digital presence that ESPN will be launching to specifically target female sports fans.

There's no doubt that the female audience is there.  In many cases women comprise anywhere from 30 - 50% of the fan base for mainstream sports like baseball (45%), football (44%) and pro men's basketball (36%).  And, there is no doubt that this is a totally under-marketed group of fans - the standard "pink it and shrink it" marketing approach is tired. 

Currently women account for about 24% of ESPNs audience.  In-studio shows rank lowest for women viewership, and the only shows that have a higher percentage of women views then men are National Spelling Bee and Cheerleading (I just threw up in my mouth a little...)  Studies show that women prefer sports news that focuses on storytelling (e.g. Olympics), are less likely to see sports as a "passive" - seeking out holistic coverage ostensibly inclusive of recommendations and personal tie-ins, and prefer a slant towards female athletes and women's athletics. 

So, ESPN is attempting to reach women in new ways by launching espnW - a women's portal dedicated to serving up sports news in a way women are more recpetive to (versus focusing exclusively on women's sports.) No confirmation on if a network would follow, but there is potential.

And, the debate begins...

Many came out immediately against espnW on blogs and Twitter, stating that we have seen time and time again that separate is not equal.  Detractors feel that an individual women's network would give ESPN license to marginalize women's sports even more so than they already are.  Others are excited to see what this portal will hold, and are interested in the new approach. 

What do you think?

You can follow espnW on Facebook and Twitter.

The Sports Week in Social Media - Oct. 15, 2010

A round up of this week's social sweat...

• New Orleans Saints QB Drew Brees asks Twitter followers for baby name suggestions, gets over 10,000 responses.  Must be a boys name starting with "B".  Send suggestions and compalints to @drewbrees.

• No one can shut up about Terrell Owens violating the 90 minute NFL pre-game Twitter ban. So, apparently the NFL means business. Just fine him already.

• ESPN's Bill Simmons writes the longest article in the history of man describing how he crapped the bed on the Moss/Vikings trade by publicly tweeting an intended DM, inadvertantly "breaking" the trade news. "My brain basically farts all over my blackberry." Thought provoking run down of sports reporting in the social media age.  

• Interesting comparison of Twitter and Facebook followers across professional sports leagues from Coyle Media.  NBA wins, though international soccer phenom Cristiano Ronaldo bests all the US leagues with 13.7MM Facebook friends...all by himself.

• Great Sports 2.0 presentation from Espresso with awesome quotes, stats (it took LeBron 7 hours to amass 150,000 Twitter followers) and a solid road map for social media engagement using real life case studies (e.g. the Cleveland Indians Social Media Deck for fans with large social graphs, and corresponding online Social Media Clubhouse.)

Sports 2.0: Game On

Did I forget something?  Leave a comment below with your favorites social media stories from this sports world.