Giants fans “like’ the team to reveal daily videos at Super Bowl

Posted January 31st, 2012 by Pat Coyle   •   No Comments   

Some sports teams know how to trigger a frenzy on social channels before big games…and the NY Giants are one such team! The Giant’s plans leading up to Super Bowl XLVI should inspire marketers looking for ways to engage users in social media as well.

Leading up to 2008’s Super Bowl, NY Giants DB Sam Madison carried around a small Flip Video Recorder, and personally shot videos that fans could view on the NY Giant’s website. He shot photos, team practices, and captured footage from when the team went out to dinner. Madison’s footage was pushed out on the site every day, and people responded excitedly to this “insiders view” of their favorite team. The videos had lots of viral spread. The content was so successful that Madison later built a website around it.

The NY Giants are gearing up to bring this experience to eager fans again…except this time they will do it via social media channels like Facebook and Twitter. And this time the “Player Cam” will feature Dave Tollefson with the “Tolly Cam”. No matter how much access an outside production unit has, no one can replace the content gold that comes when you capture one player interacting with another.

Promoting the Super Bowl this way is resourceful for the NY Giants too. They can offer an exclusive experience for fans without organizing expensive, high production film crews, and long much lead times. Using Wildfire Interactive‘s social marketing platform to host the promotion, NY Giant’s Digital Marketing Director Nilay Shah will upload “fan gated” videos on the Giant’s Facebook page. For each 10k likes the page receives, Dave Tollefson’s latest video will be unlocked and revealed for all to see.

Visitors have incentive to like the page, encourage their friends and family to do so, and to return to see new content as fever around the event builds. It’s all up to the fans to get the content.

“We asked ourselves internally, ‘How can we build up promotion around this event without doing a lot of sophisticated video production work?’” digital marketing director Nilay Shah said, “And how can we build a promotion that not only hits my cousin who is a Giant’s fan, but also those that aren’t diehard fans, who’ll be curious to see these videos? We thought this format was an excellent way to give diehard and casual fans what they are asking for.”

Dave Tollefson will insight fans to get excited about the videos with a message that says something LIKE this (not exact script): “Alright Giants fans! I’m heading to Indianapolis on Tuesday. And I’m going to be capturing a ton of moments you can only see if you like us on Facebook. The team flying in…us on the bus ride to our hotel…checking in…team dinners and practices. I’m going to be shooting it, with just me and my teammates. No reporter will get this kind of access because they can’t even get into the hotel. And it’s up to YOU to unlock the content.”

What about “milliennial” sports fans?

Posted January 30th, 2012 by Pat Coyle   •   No Comments   

I stumbled on this great infographic (“How social media influences Millennials shopping decisions” from eConsultancy. We’re finding similar differences in ticket purchasing behavior between younger, tech savvy vs. older, less-tech savvy sports fans. Watch for more on this in our next round of Social Sports Poll releases.

Super Bowl infographic from Bluekai / Kantar

Posted January 25th, 2012 by Pat Coyle   •   No Comments   

What if your Facebook fans were really worth a dollar?

Posted January 21st, 2012 by Pat Coyle   •   No Comments   


Caption: After re-purposing CAPTCHA so each human-typed response helps digitize books, Luis von Ahn wondered how else to use small contributions by many on the Internet for greater good. At TEDxCMU, he shares how his ambitious new project, Duolingo, will help millions learn a new language while translating the Web quickly and accurately -- all for free. More

This video really blew me away. Amazing what can be accomplished when you have a HUGE number of people engaged in ANYTHING. If everyone does just a little bit, mountains can truly be moved.

How does this apply to sports? Imagine you've got a million fans following you on Facebook, and you can get $1 from each. Now do that once a month and see if you don't start thinking differently about your digital audience. Get a little bit from a lot of people...if you're interested in pursuing ideas like this, you should join us in London on 27 March for the Fanographie Summit. Hope to see you there.