How Liverpool Fans Really Feel

I’ve had a 26 year love affair with Liverpool FC but as I’ve said on Twitter, I’m quickly becoming disillusioned and am falling out of love with the club. I want to be inspired by what happens on the pitch, not disheartened. Hopefully this ownership issue can be resolved and the fans can do what we should do – support the club and revel in our victories.

via Mike Jefferies – Twitter | Blog

Thinking Different, Again

A while back, I wrote about the high school football coach who never punts, who always goes for it on fourth down and who always onside-kicks. He had looked at the game in a different way and was exploiting inefficiencies and insights. This is a similar story of the Houston Rockets’s D-league (developmental) team which has all but eliminated the mid-range jump shot. They only shoot 3’s or go for close-to-the-hoop shots. They’ve recognised that all shots in basketball have a value but that that value is not recognised on the score board. As one of the players says “shooting 33 per cent of 3s is the equivalent of shooting 50 per cent of 2s”.

Hopefully we’ll see more of this sort of different thinking in all sports, particularly if the “b-team” concept takes off in the UK and Premier League teams (like Liverpool) can experiment with different concepts, players, formations and tactics before trying them on the  big stage.

 

Accrington Stanley? Who are they?

Every time I hear the name Accrington Stanley, I can’t help but think of this superb UK Milk ad from 1980’s.

Liverpool was, is and will be my club forever so to see that Ian Rush drank milk, well, that was good enough for me. And which 8 year old boy wants to play for a club they’ve never heard of?

PUMA: Love or Football

The famous Liverpool FC manager, Bill Shankly, once said

“Some people believe football is a matter of life and death, I am very disappointed with that attitude. I can assure you it is much, much more important than that”.

Well, PUMA set out to see if this was true – do football fans really love their clubs more than their wives? The answer, in the form of some compelling, thought provoking and divisive branded content is below.

Visit Love or Football for the full “white paper”.

I’m really interested to see how this intelligent approach works for PUMA, especially vs than the usual football marketing – usually we get a glossy high octane piece of video, based on the same old insights, with incredibly skilled players doing incredible skills. Don’t get me wrong, I love the traditional approach and it is one of the main reasons I look forward to the major football tournaments every 2 years…the ads! But this approach is inviting conversation, discord and debate – perfect for getting people to share in and pass along the brand’s message and heritage in the beautiful game. It adds another dimension to the way we can think about marketing our clients.

The other thing that is interesting is the result of the test – I can’t comment on the methodology so I have to presume it is fine! From a human level, it shows the power of peer pressure and conformity – these men, of all generations, know how a true football fan is “expected” to behave and this learned behaviour is enough to override a strong physiological response honed over thousands of years. For what its worth, while I love my club, I know I love my wife more – I just wish they could get along better.

Fernando Torres as a Cartoon Character

As an unabashed Liverpool fan, Fernando Torres is one of, if not the, my favourite players in the game right now. So when I saw that the Spanish editorial group “SM” had created a comic called ‘Fernando Torres and the Emperor’s Consul’, I had to share.

Via Liverpool Football Club and Fernando Torres’s Official website.

Valentine’s Day Video – Football or Love?

I’m not sure exactly how this idea was conceived but “let’s get 50 or so loud beery geezers in a pub singing a soppy love song” doesn’t sound like the most compelling of pitches.

The result, however, is strangely compelling. The raw beauty of the male voice and the intensity of the “choir’s” singing made me watch all the way through. Take a look at the PUMA Hard Chorus singing Truly Madly Deeply:

I won’t be sending this to my Valentine*, which you can do at PUMA Hard Chorus, but I love that a sports brand, known for its machismo is trying to forge that emotional connection with its consumers.  Football players who wear PUMA are fiercely loyal to the PUMA Kings line (beautifully soft kangaroo leather uppers with a simple, sleek design) and this sort of compelling, long form content provides them an excuse, a “why now”, to extend that connection and spread their advocacy for the brand.

More than that, I love the insight that this is built on. That for this year’s Valentine’s Day, football fans all over the world face a conflict between the one they love and the one they have always loved. As Nick Burcher puts it:

Atletico Madrid vs Barcelona; Manchester City vs Liverpool; Napoli vs Inter or romance with a loved one.

Via: PUMA Hardchorus Valentine’s Day viral – love vs football.

Disponibile anche in Italiano

* Actually, using Facebook Connect, I did send this to my Valentine which will undoubtedly precipitate an immediate upgrade in the real-life gift department…

The 2009 Gartner Hype Cycle

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Every year, technology research house, Gartner releases what is known as a “hype cycle” – rating the expectations behind each maturing technology against their usefulness/adoption within business. It shows how technologies move through the initial spurt (technology trigger), through the peak of inflated expectations (can anyone say “Twitter”), through the trough of disillusionment, into to the slope of enlightenment and finally, the plateau of productivity and mainstream adoption.

This year is no different (see the graphic below)and an insightful write-up of the part of this year’s Gartner Hype Cycle which focuses on social media can be found on ReadWriteWeb.

It is interesting to note that Twitter, or more generally speaking “microblogging”, is falling from the peak of inflated expectations and into the trough of disillusionment. It is great to see corporate blogging moving up the slope of enlightenment and is predicted to reach mainstream adoption in “less than two years”. Personally I am surprised to see online video on the downward slope to to the trough of disillusionment and that it is being outstripped by public virtual worlds in the “race” to mainstream adoption.

It is also interesting to see what is moving up the peak of inflated expectations. Augmented reality is a very cool technology which you can see in action below.

Mobile robots sound very cool and Internet TV could make advertising far more interactive and contextually relevant – imagine watching a Liverpool match and being flashed an ad to buy a Fernando Torres shirt after he scores another screamer…and it being one click away on your remote. You can insert your own preferred sport/team 😉

Most importantly of all for com.motion and our clients, the “Web 2.0” or social media phenomenon is rated as moving into the slope of enlightenment and that it will be adopted by the mainstream in less than two years. Judging by the exciting and innovative technologies on the hype cycle, we are in for an exciting time!

More on the Gartner Hype Cycle for consultants and agencies.

Technorati Tags: gartner hype cycle,RreadWriteWeb,microblogging,augmented reality,Internet TV,com.motion,virtual worlds,Web 2.0

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2009 Gartner Hype Cycle

Cross posted from the com.motion blog.

Every year, technology research house, Gartner releases what is known as a “hype cycle” – rating the expectations behind each maturing technology against their usefulness/adoption within business. It shows how technologies move through the initial spurt (technology trigger), through the peak of inflated expectations (can anyone say “Twitter”), through the trough of disillusionment, into to the slope of enlightenment and finally, the plateau of productivity and mainstream adoption.

This year is no different (see the graphic below)and an insightful write-up of the part of this year’s Gartner Hype Cycle which focuses on social media can be found on ReadWriteWeb.

It is interesting to note that Twitter, or more generally speaking “microblogging”, is falling from the peak of inflated expectations and into the trough of disillusionment. It is great to see corporate blogging moving up the slope of enlightenment and is predicted to reach mainstream adoption in “less than two years”. Personally I am surprised to see online video on the downward slope to to the trough of disillusionment and that it is being outstripped by public virtual worlds in the “race” to mainstream adoption.

It is also interesting to see what is moving up the peak of inflated expectations. Augmented reality is a very cool technology which you can see in action below.

Mobile robots sound very cool and Internet TV could make advertising far more interactive and contextually relevant – imagine watching a Liverpool match and being flashed an ad to buy a Fernando Torres shirt after he scores another screamer…and it being one click away on your remote. You can insert your own preferred sport/team 😉

Most importantly of all for com.motion and our clients, the “Web 2.0” or social media phenomenon is rated as moving into the slope of enlightenment and that it will be adopted by the mainstream in less than two years. Judging by the exciting and innovative technologies on the hype cycle, we are in for an exciting time!

More on the Gartner Hype Cycle for consultants and agencies.

Technorati Tags: gartner hype cycle,RreadWriteWeb,microblogging,augmented reality,Internet TV,com.motion,virtual worlds,Web 2.0

I’m a Twitter snob too!

Twitter is a complete time-sink with very few business applications (that I can see) but it is a whole lot of fun.

As a result, I’m spending more and more of my time over on my Twitter account where I, in no particular order:

• Post interesting links
• Talk about pop culture
• Give some sort of commentary on how my beloved Liverpool are doing (including “breaking” the Twitter formatting with 140 character long celebrations. no spaces.)
• Banter with my online friends and colleagues
• Ask for (and sometimes even get) stats/research/examples/lunch suggestions

But I’m a snob. I follow people I find interesting and who I want to stay connected with. I try to keep the people I’m following to under 100 and I don’t follow other people just so they’ll follow me back.

For some reason, about 500 people have signed up to see what’s up in my life – which is a bit confusing/disconcerting. I’m not even interesting enough for my wife to want to know what’s going on with me, or even, and this is depressing, when Liverpool score.

I’m flattered by the attention and I do click through to every new follower’s profile to see who they are and whether I want to follow them. For me, following them is a completely arbitrary decision based on any number of utterly subjective factors most of which are probably too facile to even consider codifying.

However, if you really, really, really do want me to follow you, all’s not lost. Twitter means you can see what I’m doing and by inserting the simple “@edlee” you can direct your update/message/link to me. It’s a conversation, so let’s converse!

I’ve started following a good few people this way and uncovered some interesting people this way – it’s just that I won’t follow people just because they follow me. Sorry.

More on being a Twitter Snob

Mitch Joel is a Twitter snob.

This guy’s Twitter etiquette is absurd.

Does Twitter have business benefits?

Colin Carmichael can see the business benefits of Twitter. I can see the business benefit of having a “status” (a la Facebook) associated with your bio/contact details within your company’s intranet but,I can’t see the conversational nature of Twitter, specifically, scaling very well – especially in an organization as large as Fleishman-Hillard (c2,600 employees). For my money, all the “@s” would render such a system utterly useless – I’d look up what a colleague in London or Hong Kong was doing, to see whether I could call them and see them deep in a conversation with another colleague about whether, for example, Peep Show is better than Big Train or the Mighty Boosh.

[Disclosure, Super Channel, the TV network that carries Peep Show in Canada is a client][Double disclosure, Peep Show >>> Big Train]

Not so useful as seeing a Facebook style status update – Ed’s colleague is on vacation rather than getting an erstwhile Out Of Office notification.

However, as with all new social media, Twitter is worth following – or at least monitoring.

Tags: twitter snob social media

User Generated Content: Be Careful What You Wish For

Engagement is a good thing. Having the 1 per cent of your passionate customers submit content for your brand is a good thing.

But, as many things social media related, these good things come with a caveat emptor: buyer beware. After all, when it comes to UGC, you get what you pay for.

Take Sky News back in the U.K.. What better way to add context and texture to an already engaging event like the London Marathon than to ask your viewers/readers to submit their photos from around the 26.2 mile course.

Well, not clicking on “approve” on every photo that comes in while preswatching the (enthralling) Liverpool vs. Blackburn and Man. Utd. vs. Arsenal matches would be a good start.

Check out some of the worst offenders I noticed while clicking though today:

(Check out the banner on the bridge)

(Erm, do you see something that’s inappropriately out of place)

(Can you spot a certain movie star?)

(Not out of the realms of probability, but I doubt the Tron dude is going to be watching the London Marathon)

Just another warning that while there is always the 1 per cent of passionate users who will willingly create content and drive the conversation forward, there will be a greater or equal amount of people willing to mess about with the cool tools you’re using and to abuse the trust you’re putting in them.

Technorati Tags: user generated content, cautionary tale, sky news, london marathon 2008