With 40% of U.S. individuals utilizing second screen devices, it is tough to ignore the over-saturation of trending topics revolving around the big game, the star athlete, or the Twitter-revoked and tackle-taking cheerleader with weeklong glory. Sports fans are verbal, they are passionate, and they are opinionated, which presents a unique opportunity for leagues and brands to create brilliant examples of social media campaigns, contests, case studies, and even now, on-field tangibles to leverage this enthusiasm. With that, I bring you some spectacular examples of social media implementation into the sporting world.

MLB FanCave: An Offline-to-Online Content Powerhouse

Major League Baseball introduced in 2011 their Downtown Manhattan, New York based social media hub called the FanCave. The idea: two fans, fifteen big-screen TV’s, and a season-long journey to watch every MLB contest (that’s 2,430 games) of the 2011 season. With the help of over 150 visits from professional athletes, musical performances from top artists, and TV and movie star appearances, the 15,000 sq.-foot space played host to a social media content beast.

Through 300 blog posts, 200 videos of celeb skits and interviews, and most of all, good ole’ baseball banter, it all merged together and led to a sizeable social media boom: a 200,000+ “Liked” Facebook page, a nearly 57,000 “Followed” Twitter account, and over one million social media impressions.

While not every brand has the mass appeal and last minute resources to construct their very own marketing control center, the FanCave showed us that rich, engaging content can give you an edge over competitors who may not be utilizing their online space. Major League Baseball spiced up their social media presence; they threw a few curveballs with attention-grabbing videos, shared behind-the-scenes photos, and strayed away from the traditional status update.

 What works so well with ESPN Sports Bar is a combination of sponsorship integration, brand centralization, and mood-boosting gaming. Samsung, a sponsor of Sports Bar, has its products featured and integrated into the game. The Samsung Galaxy Tab is one of several products that users can unlock by completing missions and challenges. The game also revolves around the user by allowing full-on personalizing in their bar, from colors and menu items, to employees and TV channels.

Client Name

Solution Type — Digital Promotion

Objective — Promote the release of Chrysler’s 2012 Jeep Call-of-Duty edition Wrangler through an immersive, social-driven consumer promotion within Facebook around Activision’s much-anticipated release of Call of Duty Modern Warfare 3.

Activation — Jeep Ops, an immersive Facebook sweepstakes game, asked fans of Jeep to play the game, mimicking the in-game Call of Duty story to earn entries into the contest by completing Missions in order to win the first-off-the-line 2012 Jeep Wrangler COD version.

Results
•       453,842 Visits | 940,964 Page views
•       51,569 Total submissions | 46,592 Playing the game
•       2,435,164 total ballot entries

Campaigns/Initiatives

Engage users by creating a Call-of-Duty themed virtual scavenger hunt on Facebook that highlights both the capabilities of the new Wrangler Call-of-Duty MW3 Edition and the game locations.  Users earn “ballots” for participation, solving clues, and referring friends that result in additional chances to win.

Services Provided

•       Social Media Sweepstakes
•       Social Media Monitoring
•       Technical execution of Facebook Application

Notes
This effort was a highly technical one, executed under a tight timeline. Affinitive, as a Facebook Preferred Developer Consultant (PDC), leveraged its extensive expertise with Facebook Platform among a collaborative team of several other creative and media agencies, including Sapient Nitro.

How it Works

Once a user has "Liked" the Jeep Facebook page, they are directed to a Call-of-Duty-esque commander module where they receive instructions on the game.

Next, users were led through four different "missions", where they were given clues about a specific location they that they must solve—by any means necessary—to locate various parts of the vehicle.

Completed missions earn achievement badges and bonus ballots for the sweepstakes to win the first-off-the-line 2012 Jeep Wrangler Call of Duty: MW3 Edition. The farher along users advance through the four stages of training, the greater the number of ballots earned.

Ballots will be tallied after midnight on December 31, 2011 and the winner will be drawn at random for the new Jeep Wrangler, Call of Duty: MW3 edition.

Solution Type – Digital Promotions, Social Marketing for nutritional supplement brand MuscleTech

Objective:
Counter declining brand sentiment and support the launch of a new line of products by developing and activating the MuscleTech audience in social media, engaging with targeted communities and influencers to educate and deliver key product and brand messaging where it would be heard.

Services Provided:                                      
Contests and Sweepstakes
Blogger/Influencer  Outreach
Facebook Advertising
Social Media Monitoring
Social Media Audit
Internal Policies and Education
Profile Management
Facebook Applications
Product Sampling/Fulfillment

Activation:
Formalized the social media program for Iovate prior to the program’s launch including conducting a social media audit, developing the communication workflow, engagement guidelines, and more.  Utilized a cross-platform content strategy (Facebook, Twitter, Foursquare, YouTube, Knowledge Base) to consistently deliver interesting and relevant content and brand messaging with MuscleTech’s audience.  Improved customer interaction across major social networks by engaging with people talking about MuscleTech, its products, and the sport of bodybuilding. Earned new customers and brand followers by applying audience development tactics across platforms, developing sweepstakes, exclusive offers and content supported by targeted Facebook advertising. Educated customers about new products through interactive Facebook tabs and a Support Center with answers to commonly asked questions, and empowered them to share and recommend content and products through targeted trial sampling programs.

Client:

Solution Type: Digital Promotion – MLS Pubs ViewFest Multichannel Sweepstakes

Technology: Affinitive’s Social Sweepstakes Platform

Services Provided: Strategy, Creative, Technology, and Measurement

Objective:
Major League Soccer seeks to increase brand awareness and drive tune-in by activating their network of 150 national pubs in a creative and competitive way.

Activation:
Consumers discover the promotion from three locations; the MLS Facebook Page, the MLS Pubs page or through collateral that each pub displayed during game nights.

Consumers entered and participated in the sweepstakes in three steps:

Connect their foursquare account with the sweepstakes

Check-in on foursquare from participating pubs during MLS games

Win prizes such as VIP trip to MLS Cup, Club Jerseys, Viewing Party for winning Pub, and more

Solution Type: Digital Promotion – Michael Jackson “Experience the Glove” Ultimate Rewards Sweepstakes

Technology: Affinitive’s Social Sweepstakes Platform

Services Provided: Strategy, Creative, Technology, Community Management and Measurement

Objective

Ubisoft sought to increase awareness and acquire Facebook fans for the new Xbox360 Kinect video game, Michael Jackson The Experience.

Activation

Like & Win sweepstakes that required fans to like the Michael Jackson The Experience page then vote daily for their favorite celebrity-sponsored charity.  Each vote increased the entrant’s chances of winning a replica Michael Jackson glove. A partnership with Charity Buzz facilitated the participation of Ndamukong Suh, Whoopi Goldberg and Shaquille O’Neal.  The celebrity-sponsored charity with the most votes at the end of the sweepstakes won a $5,000 donation from Ubisoft. 

Results (8 Week Campaign)

• 600,000 Facebook Likes
• 9,700 Votes
• 3,800 Shares w/ 8.5 Facebook Feedback
• 2,500 Sweepstakes Entries
• 42% Opt-in to Ubisoft CRM

Solution Type: Digital Promotion

Technology: Affinitive’s Facebook Sweepstakes Application

Summary

Your Shape Fitness Evolved (YSFE) sought to target gamers who are passionate about health and enjoy getting fit with video games.  As one of the first games to use Microsoft Kinect, YSFE had the challenge of conveying the efficacy and fun of the game as well as the Kinect device on a limited budget. The campaign goal was to create buzz and excitement for the game within social media channels in advance of the game’s release in November 2010.

The ‘Boot Camp’ Facebook Contest campaign launched in October asking influential gamers to submit audition videos to explain why they needed a fitness makeover. Five winners were flown to San Francisco to play the game before the public and give their opinions and feedback.

Ubisoft uploaded images, video and blog entries in real time during the 2 day “Boot Camp’ event, adding excitement and intrigue for fans. Influencers uploaded their own content after the event and inspired hundreds of gamers to create their own diaries.

Results

• 17X Increase in Facebook Likes in 8 Weeks
• 5,000,000+ Impressions (Xbox, Facebook, Twitter)
• 130 photos & videos submitted
• 50,000+ YouTube Views

Winner 2011 MI6 Game Marketing Awards – Most Effective Viral Marketing

Video Entries By ‘Boot Camp’ Contestants

Hamza Aziz (Destructoid.com)

Rande Gabriel

Rachel Davis

Jeremy Yarbrough

To get you up to speed, “Get On The Bus” was a contest encouraging US-based travelers to Like Contiki on Facebook and create virtual buses heading to one of eight Contiki vacation destinations, fill the buses with four of their friends and campaign to get the most votes of any other bus. You can learn more about this contest at the Facebook Studio.

The campaign generated over 10 million impressions through press coverage and sharing, and millions more impressions through offline WOM and advertising that supported the contest. Contiki additionally benefited from nearly 10,000 new US-based Facebook fans and thousands of newsletter signups.

Get On The Bus was deemed a success, but even the best campaigns have challenges and lessons learned. Here are some of ours:

Don’t

Overcomplicate. Buses could be made private (invite-only) or public. Not all users understood how the Facebook invite friends feature worked, if their invites were sent, where they could be found and how to accept an invite. It goes to show that sometimes features can easily overcomplicate, even if those features are native to Facebook.

Draw It Out. The contest ran for 6 weeks, and while the application shot up to tens of thousands of active users in that time, in hindsight the same contest might have been executed with the same results with a shorter duration. The best contest is one that keeps participants on their toes and engaged in the event, so it’s important not to draw it out and lose interest from fans.

Make Rules You Can’t Enforce. It was decided prior to the launch of the contest that vote-swapping and vote-buying would not be permitted. This was more difficult to monitor or define than originally planned. Once it was discovered that participants who were caught vote-swapping/buying were being disqualified, contestants began setting each other up to look like they were breaking the rules. The intention behind the rule was good, but the varying definitions and scale of incentives and swapping was too much of a gray area to enforce accurately.

Do

Personalize The Experience. Bus creators could name their own bus and give it a story.  Bus pages pulled in passengers’ common likes and interests from Open Graph to display the music, movies, etc. the passengers on the bus liked most as well as their average age, gender breakdown, and whether they were “Party” or “Culture” travelers.

Pages also included Facebook comments and activity streams updating the latest happenings on the bus. Participants had a ball with the personalization built into the contest experience and it showed with impressive time spent metrics.

Promote Sharing. Millions of impressions were generated through pass along on Facebook, Twitter and other platforms. The contest made sharing and spreading the word a core component of the campaign, and it paid off in reach and awareness numbers. The critical piece is to make sharing a natural extension of the contest, and not just a mechanism to spam friends.

Create A Sense Of Urgency. The contest leader board showed, in real-time, which buses had the most votes. Participants were glued to the leader board checking in on how their bus was doing as voting wound down, which was in turn a huge motivator to get more votes. Additionally, email notifications were sent as the contest neared its conclusion, which drove many people back to the contest to turn their campaigning into high gear.

We had a blast working on this project with Contiki, and are happy to see them getting the recognition they deserve for hosting an innovative contest like this one.  We hope these learnings can help your team execute some great Facebook contests down the road.  There are many more Dos and Don’ts, so please share yours in the comments!

Here’s a summary of our discussion:

Random House | The Building Blocks of a Successful WOM Platform

Through its “Random Buzzers” online community platform, Random House is facilitating conversations between the publisher, authors, and Millennial readers. In this session, you’ll not only learn the mechanics behind this program (2010 Gold WOMMY Award Winner), but also find answers to questions like; How do I best utilize a ‘Give to Get’ philosophy to drive WOM? How can I sell that concept internally? How can brands act cross-functionally to maximize consumer experience and program ROI? How do I employ segmentation strategies to optimize engagement? What are optimal content development and frequency strategies? How important are engagement incentives? How can I report on and measure online and offline WOM?

Visit the School of WOM site for more information as well as registration details. Hope you can make it!

You can view our case study below. We’ll post up a video overview shortly.

There were a ton of great entries from some really talented brands and agencies, so it’s truly an honor to be in such great company. Congratulations to everyone on our team as well as the team at Random House.

More case studies here.