I love this idea.
Gatorade and Fox Sports are teaming up to give unsettled high school rivalries a chance to settle the score - a decade after they originally played.
In Replay: The Series, old high school rivals are nominated to play again in re-matches organized by Gatorade and Fox Sports. The two companies provide training, coaches, a venue, and the opportunity to bring closure to old competition.
The first season of Replay: The Series featured the 1993 football teams from Easton (PA) Area High School and Phillipsburg (NJ) High School. The 1993 Thanksgiving Day game between these two long-time rivals ended in a disappointing tie. On April 26, 2009, these same players - now 33-year-olds, not 18-year-olds - suited up one final time to determine a winner once and for all.
Gatorade provided eight weeks of intensive training for the teams (as well as sports drinks for the game, of course); while Peyton and Eli Manning served as honorary coaches for the big game.
The second season of Replay: The Series culminated in a hockey match last Sunday, May 9, 2010, between the 1999 teams of Central Catholic High School and Trenton High School, both from Detroit. The original 1999 game ended in a draw after a player's jugular vein was sliced open by a skate. Eleven years later, that player inspired Gatorade and Fox Sports to reunite the teams for a final match-up.
I love Replay: The Series simply because it's fun.
It's fun to hear the stories of the original fateful (or non-fateful, however you want to look at them) games.
It's fun to see the passion and anticipation of these former high school athletes and their hometown fans.
It's fun to see grown men get back into shape for a shot at redemption.
It's fun to read player bios, follow the training, and watch the final outcomes of the games on the Replay website.
And it's fun to nominate one's own high school team for a Replay via the Replay Lineup Finder on Facebook.
If you want to build love of your brand, connect better to your audience, and strengthen brand awareness, why not do it with something that's just plain fun for people to participate in and to watch? Create a fun and worthwhile experience; people will remember you for it.
Showing posts with label customer-created content. Show all posts
Showing posts with label customer-created content. Show all posts
Friday, May 7, 2010
Wednesday, February 10, 2010
Super Bowl XLIV and the Web
The Super Bowl is known to be an event that features not only the year's best in professional football, but also the year's best in television advertising.
Many football fans and non-football-fans alike watch the Super Bowl for the sake of seeing the commercials just as much as - or more than - for the sake of watching the actual football game. And this year, I don't think those viewers were disappointed. Most of the commercials were very well done; many were funny; a few were slightly disturbing. And the football game was exciting, too.
But what impressed me most about Super Bowl XLIV was the number of brands that integrated their television commercials with free bonus content on the Web.
Several companies allowed web users to see "sneak peeks" of their Super Bowl spots during the week before the game. Many of these offers tied into a reciprocity technique - after watching the short clip, users were encouraged to follow the brand on Twitter, or to use a promotional code to receive a discount at the brand's online store. And after the game, some brands then emailed links for the full versions of their ads to users who opted in to their mailing list.
Also this year, all of the Super Bowl commercials were made publicly available to users after the spots aired during the game. Viewers can watch all 71 commercials at www.youtube.com/adblitz, and between now and February 14, can vote for their favorite.
Of these Web-integrated Super Bowl campaigns, my personal favorite is the HomeAway ad:
This ad is actually a trailer for a new short film, available for viewing pleasure at HomeAway.com. Clark and Ellen Griswold return in "Hotel Hell Vacation," much to the delight of this particular National Lampoon fan. Visitors to the site can also watch other short videos, play the Griswold Getaway game, read (and vote for their favorite) user-submitted hotel horror stories, and enter to win a dream vacation.
With these and the other web-integrated Super Bowl advertisements, it seems that brands are beginning to understand how offering free, fun, accessible content to audiences can help to build customer relationships. As companies provide content like this, they associate their names with enjoyable experiences, and create opportunities to delight customers and to form positive impressions and reputations in the minds of consumers.
And after a customer spends 15 minutes exploring this fun content, he might also explore the actual product information on the rest of the brand website. Or at least remember HomeAway.com, for example, the next time he plans a family vacation.
Great job, HomeAway.com and others. I hope that next year, your Super Bowl ads will go one step further, by integrating with mobile content as well (as blogger Steve Smith points out).
Many football fans and non-football-fans alike watch the Super Bowl for the sake of seeing the commercials just as much as - or more than - for the sake of watching the actual football game. And this year, I don't think those viewers were disappointed. Most of the commercials were very well done; many were funny; a few were slightly disturbing. And the football game was exciting, too.
But what impressed me most about Super Bowl XLIV was the number of brands that integrated their television commercials with free bonus content on the Web.
Several companies allowed web users to see "sneak peeks" of their Super Bowl spots during the week before the game. Many of these offers tied into a reciprocity technique - after watching the short clip, users were encouraged to follow the brand on Twitter, or to use a promotional code to receive a discount at the brand's online store. And after the game, some brands then emailed links for the full versions of their ads to users who opted in to their mailing list.
Also this year, all of the Super Bowl commercials were made publicly available to users after the spots aired during the game. Viewers can watch all 71 commercials at www.youtube.com/adblitz, and between now and February 14, can vote for their favorite.
Of these Web-integrated Super Bowl campaigns, my personal favorite is the HomeAway ad:
This ad is actually a trailer for a new short film, available for viewing pleasure at HomeAway.com. Clark and Ellen Griswold return in "Hotel Hell Vacation," much to the delight of this particular National Lampoon fan. Visitors to the site can also watch other short videos, play the Griswold Getaway game, read (and vote for their favorite) user-submitted hotel horror stories, and enter to win a dream vacation.
With these and the other web-integrated Super Bowl advertisements, it seems that brands are beginning to understand how offering free, fun, accessible content to audiences can help to build customer relationships. As companies provide content like this, they associate their names with enjoyable experiences, and create opportunities to delight customers and to form positive impressions and reputations in the minds of consumers.
And after a customer spends 15 minutes exploring this fun content, he might also explore the actual product information on the rest of the brand website. Or at least remember HomeAway.com, for example, the next time he plans a family vacation.
Great job, HomeAway.com and others. I hope that next year, your Super Bowl ads will go one step further, by integrating with mobile content as well (as blogger Steve Smith points out).
Monday, August 24, 2009
Transparency Done Properly
Had you passed through Terminal 5 of London's Heathrow Airport any time last week, you might have happened upon author Alain de Botton, who was occupying a desk there as the airport's first Writer-In-Residence.
BAA, owner of Heathrow Airport, hired de Botton to spend one week in Terminal 5, observing the passengers and staff of Britain's largest airport. de Botton, the Swiss-British author and philosopher whose How Proust Can Change Your Life brought him acclaim in the U.S. as well as in his home across the pond, will collect his observations into his next book, A Week at the Airport: A Heathrow Diary, to be released in late September. BAA reportedly gave de Botton full physical access to all areas of the airport, as well as full literary access to cover any topic about the airport, down to any cockroaches that he may have seen.
According to Creativity-Online, 10,000 free copies of the book will be given to random Heathrow passengers; the book will also be available for sale at major retailers.
While de Botton says that this book will be more journalist-style than philosopher-style, it is still a bold marketing move for BAA to allow him full creative reign in his disclosure of the workings of the airport, as Heathrow COO Mike Brown points out.
Well done, Heathrow.
If an organization means to promote and publicize itself through an open outsider's perspective, the only way to do so is to allow the outsider to reveal everything - good, bad, and ugly. Transparency can't be done halfway; it can't show only the good, while hiding the unpleasant. Such translucency simply doesn't fly.
If your organization wants to venture into the realm of customer reviews, customer-created-content, customer blogs, etc., it must resign itself to allowing full "creative reign" to those customers. Sure, you might set and enforce some ground rules (no profanity, no obscenity, etc.), but you absolutely cannot restrict content simply because it casts your organization in a bad light. Such censorship will inevitably be found out, and will only sabotage (possibly forever) the much-needed trust of your customers and the public.
Again, I extend my congratulations to BAA for getting it right. I hope that their transparency efforts will result in better air travel and more air travel at Heathrow.
BAA, owner of Heathrow Airport, hired de Botton to spend one week in Terminal 5, observing the passengers and staff of Britain's largest airport. de Botton, the Swiss-British author and philosopher whose How Proust Can Change Your Life brought him acclaim in the U.S. as well as in his home across the pond, will collect his observations into his next book, A Week at the Airport: A Heathrow Diary, to be released in late September. BAA reportedly gave de Botton full physical access to all areas of the airport, as well as full literary access to cover any topic about the airport, down to any cockroaches that he may have seen.
According to Creativity-Online, 10,000 free copies of the book will be given to random Heathrow passengers; the book will also be available for sale at major retailers.
While de Botton says that this book will be more journalist-style than philosopher-style, it is still a bold marketing move for BAA to allow him full creative reign in his disclosure of the workings of the airport, as Heathrow COO Mike Brown points out.
Well done, Heathrow.
If an organization means to promote and publicize itself through an open outsider's perspective, the only way to do so is to allow the outsider to reveal everything - good, bad, and ugly. Transparency can't be done halfway; it can't show only the good, while hiding the unpleasant. Such translucency simply doesn't fly.
If your organization wants to venture into the realm of customer reviews, customer-created-content, customer blogs, etc., it must resign itself to allowing full "creative reign" to those customers. Sure, you might set and enforce some ground rules (no profanity, no obscenity, etc.), but you absolutely cannot restrict content simply because it casts your organization in a bad light. Such censorship will inevitably be found out, and will only sabotage (possibly forever) the much-needed trust of your customers and the public.
Again, I extend my congratulations to BAA for getting it right. I hope that their transparency efforts will result in better air travel and more air travel at Heathrow.
Wednesday, July 1, 2009
Kid-Created Content
Thanks to Creativity Online, today I learned about a new venture into customer-created content by Penguin Books publishers. At their site wemakestories.com, Penguin Books enables kids to write stories for virtual "publication" in animated book form on the site, as well as print and share their stories, view others' stories, customize old classics (Mad Libs-style), and create audiobooks, treasure maps, pop-up books, comics, and more.
What a fun thing! Especially for kids who love to write. And kids who write nearly always love to read, too, making them the perfect kids for Penguin Books to reach! And parents have to love a fun website that enables kids to use their imaginations beyond figuring out how to best decimate the bad guy.
Could other companies create similar sites for their customers? Sure. Nike or Adidas could launch a site that lets kids (or adults, too) to create virtual sneakers, experimenting with different materials (rubber, wood, cloth, bamboo, metal...), designs, and colors, to see which ones enable their character to jump higher, run farther, etc. Coke or Pepsi could make a site that allows visitors to mix virtual soft drinks and send them to friends (via email or Facebook). GM or Ford could create a site that allows people to design and "drive" virtual cars. The possibilities are endless.
One thing that surprised me about the Penguin Books site is that Penguin Books is charging parents a $10 membership fee for kids to use the site. It seems that the membership fee is a one-time deal (so members will forever have access to the site), but I question the publisher's reasoning in creating this barrier to entry. With so many free games online, why risk turning kids and parents away from this great (and almost free to Penguin Books) marketing opportunity?
Perhaps Penguin Books believes that the $10 membership fee will increase the value of the site in the eyes of the customer. We'll see if they're right.
What a fun thing! Especially for kids who love to write. And kids who write nearly always love to read, too, making them the perfect kids for Penguin Books to reach! And parents have to love a fun website that enables kids to use their imaginations beyond figuring out how to best decimate the bad guy.
Could other companies create similar sites for their customers? Sure. Nike or Adidas could launch a site that lets kids (or adults, too) to create virtual sneakers, experimenting with different materials (rubber, wood, cloth, bamboo, metal...), designs, and colors, to see which ones enable their character to jump higher, run farther, etc. Coke or Pepsi could make a site that allows visitors to mix virtual soft drinks and send them to friends (via email or Facebook). GM or Ford could create a site that allows people to design and "drive" virtual cars. The possibilities are endless.
One thing that surprised me about the Penguin Books site is that Penguin Books is charging parents a $10 membership fee for kids to use the site. It seems that the membership fee is a one-time deal (so members will forever have access to the site), but I question the publisher's reasoning in creating this barrier to entry. With so many free games online, why risk turning kids and parents away from this great (and almost free to Penguin Books) marketing opportunity?
Perhaps Penguin Books believes that the $10 membership fee will increase the value of the site in the eyes of the customer. We'll see if they're right.
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