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Roush Fenway Racing Roars Into Google+ With Team Hangouts

February 18, 2012 By Leave a Comment

Roush-Fenway Racing on Google+The 2012 NASCAR Sprint Cup season is set to get started with the Daytona 500 on February 26, but the Roush-Fenway team has scored an early win with their launch on Google+. Roush-Fenway’s digital agency Crush I.Q. has created a brand page for the team and individual profiles for team members Carl Edwards, Matt Kenseth, Greg Biggle, Ricky Stenhouse and last year’s Daytona 500 winner Trevor Bayne. Google+ themselves shared their Roush-Fenway Racing Team circle to kick things off.

Official social media profiles of NASCAR teams and drivers are commonplace on established platforms like YouTube, Twitter and Facebook, but few driver’s have ventured onto Google+ yet. Since launching the accounts on February 15, the five drivers have been added to roughly the same amount of user’s circles. 2011 runner-up Edwards leads the group at 27074, Biffle at 26942 Kenseth at 26662, Bayne at 26510, and 2011 Nationwide Champion Stenhouse added to 26276 circles.

The team will be using Google’s Hangouts to host 4 interactive video chats, starting with a multi-driver Q&A session on Wed, Feb 22 at 7pm, followed by a Daytona 500 eve chat with Trevor Bayne on Sat Feb 25, a race-day Hangout with team owner Jack Roush, and a race re-cap with Greg Biffle. It’s great to see an organization step up (assisted by their digital agency of course) and create a coordinated strategy to take advantage of the full features of a new platform like Google+.

Roush Fenway Racing continues to maintain official team profiles on Facebook, Twitter and YouTube.

Filed Under: Social Media, Sports Tagged With: , , , , , , , ,

Google Valentine’s Day Doodle Features Tony Bennett’s ‘Cold Cold Heart’

February 14, 2012 By 1 Comment

Google Valentine's Day DoodleGoogle rarely disappoints when it comes to creating a custom version of their logo for special days, and the Google doodle for Valentine’s Day is no exception.

A young boy uses the search engine trying to find that special something to impress a little girl. I really thought she’s go for that dinosaur sweatshirt, but she returns to her skipping unimpressed.

The animation was co-created by Michael “Lippy” Lipman with Google designer Willie Real, and features Tony Bennett’s 1951 recording of Hank Williams’ ‘Cold Cold Heart’, a number one hit on Billboard.

Happy Valentine’s Day to everyone :)

Filed Under: Art & Design Tagged With: , , , ,

Ted Williams Reads Valentine’s Tweets for Kraft Macaroni & Cheese

February 14, 2012 By Leave a Comment

Kraft Golden Voice of LoveIt’s been a little over a year since Columbus Dispatch videographer Doral Chenoweth stumbled across the then homeless Ted Williams standing alongside traffic with a hand-written sign asking for donations.

Now the smooth talking Ted Williams is ‘The Golden Voice of Love’ in a new Valentine’s Day campaign for Kraft Macaroni & Cheese.

From February 12 to 14, Williams will be creating personalized videos in which he reads the best of user’s Valentine’s Day Tweets tagged with #VoiceofLove. The video will then be posted to Kraft Macaroni & Cheese YouTube Channel and tweeted to Kraft’s Twitter profile.

For every tweet tagged with #VoiceofLove Kraft will make a donation of 100 boxes of Macaroni & Cheese to Feeding America, up to 100,000 boxes.

The campaign was created by Crispin Porter + Bogusky.

Filed Under: Advertising & Marketing Tagged With: , ,

Valentine’s Flash Mob Spreads the Love at Indigo Books in Toronto

February 11, 2012 By Leave a Comment

Indigo Valentine's Flash MobIt seemed like just another day at the Bay & Bloor location of Indigo Books, until a young man carrying a bouquet of roses began singing ‘Happy Together’ to a what seems like an Indigo employee. The people at the store may have thought they were about to witness a very creative engagement proposal, until the man jumps up onto the counter and another half dozen performers join in on the performance.

Just as things seemed to be over, a performer disguised as an author signing books stands up and begins singing the Stevie Wonder classic ‘Signed, Sealed, Delivered’ as he hands out gifts to startled shoppers. The performance with Calvin Harris’ ‘We Found Love’ and wraps up with Roy Orbison’s ‘You Got It’.

It’s too bad that the ending comes off sounding so commercial with the song’s lyrics changed from ‘You Got It’ to “Anything You Want, We Got It”. But in the end it’s a promotion afterall.

Filed Under: Advertising & Marketing, Experiential Tagged With: , , , , ,

Budweiser Surprises Toronto Rec-League Teams in Super Bowl Ad

February 3, 2012 By Leave a Comment

Budweiser Canada Flash Fans AdWhen the guys from Les Amigos and the Toronto Generals showed up for their recreational league game at the Port Credit arena (capacity 700) back in December they had little idea what was in store for them. The two teams had been told that a documentary production crew was at the rink was there to shoot footage about rec league hockey.

During the second period, 500 fans in team colours, costumes and bodypaint rushed into the tiny arena to the surprise of the players. As Budweiser banners around the rink were unfurled the fans were followed by costumed team mascots and a play-by-play crew and soon gave the quiet rec-league game an NHL atmosphere, including kerfluffles.

Tied at the end of regulation time, the Generals came out on top 4-3 after an overtime goal. I suspect both teams had ample opportunity to celebrate with a few Buds after the game.

It’s a thrill to see the local Port Credit hockey arena featured in a national ad. The 52 year-old arena had only recently re-opened after over a year of extensive renovations.

The ad will be seen this Sunday during CTV’s Super Bowl broadcast.

Filed Under: Advertising & Marketing, Experiential, Sports Tagged With: , , , , ,

Adriana Lima, Chuck Liddel & Motley Crue Kickstart Kia’s Super Bowl Ad

February 2, 2012 By 1 Comment

Kia Dream CarIt looks like Kia America is going for the dude market with their 2012 Super Bowl commercial (the extended version is embedded above).

In the ad, Mr. Sandman enters the bedroom of a sleeping couple. He lightly sprinkles dream dust to the woman and instantly she’s riding across grassy hills on white horse with a well groomed guy in a puffy shirt (basically a romance novel come to life). But as Mr Sandman rounds the bed, he trips on a pair of slippers delivers a overdose of golden dream dust to the unsuspecting sleeping man. The next thing you know all hell breaks loose as the man finds himself in a white Kia Optima. Brazilian supermodel Adriana Lima drops the flag he speeds off (closed course, professional driver, blah blah blah) in front of a grandstand of cheering bikini-clad women as Motley Crue rock out on stage to ‘Kickstart My Heart’.

But no sir, it’s not over yet. The random awesomeness continues with a cowboy riding a bucking rhinoceros, lumberjacks sawing a truck-size sandwich and Chuck Liddel kicking a guy until he explodes. Soon the man and woman’s dreams cross paths in a more tranquil happy ending.

The ad was created by Kia’s ad agency David & Goliath and directed by Noam Murro of Biscuit Film Works.

Filed Under: Advertising & Marketing, Automobiles Tagged With: , , , , , ,

WWF Promote National Sweater Day with the Granny Call Centre

February 2, 2012 By Leave a Comment

WWF National Sweater DayMark your calendars fellow Canadians; February 9th is National Sweater Day. The WWF (supported by Loblaw) wants you to lower your heat a few degrees to help take action against climate change and they’ve created the Granny Call Centre, complete with a full roster 20 Grannies, Nanas, Oma, Gammies and Bubbies who will personally call you on February 9. Just choose one of the lovely ladies and book a time on February 6, 7 or 8 for your Sweater Day reminder call.

I love the campaign creative. The Sweater Day website interface is adorable (and I don’t use that word often). The hand-sewn felt buttons, knitting yarn and lace doilies look awesome.

If you’d like to promote National Sweater Day at your office, school or college you can download one of the promotional kits featured on the site.

The National Sweater Day campaign was created by Toronto agency john st. Other recent work by the agency include the Catvertising video, Rethink Breast Cancer ‘Your Man Reminder’ mobile app and the Stanfield’s Guy in His Underwear campaign to raise money for Testicular Cancer research.

Filed Under: Advertising & Marketing, Non Profit Tagged With: , , , ,

Flying People Invade New York to Promote the Movie Chronicle

February 2, 2012 By Leave a Comment

Flying people in New York CityOn Monday New Yorkers may have been startled to see what looked like three people flying around near the Brooklyn bridge and the Statue of Liberty. My first thought was “oh no, this is not going to end well”. But all was fine as the flying people turned out to be simply remote-control airplanes fashioned with a body shaped like a human silhouette. In the video embedded above you can see that from a distance they look pretty good.

The stunt turned out to be a promotion for the movie ‘Chronicle‘, a story of three high school friends who gain superpowers (including flying) that is set for release this Friday.

The promotion was carried out by New York viral video company Thinkmodo, who have carried out such previous campaigns as the Times Square fake video transmitter for ‘Limitless‘ and the sawed off parking meter clip for ‘In Time‘.

Filed Under: Experiential Tagged With: , ,

Ferris Bueller Takes a Day Off to Promote to Honda CR-V

January 30, 2012 By Leave a Comment

Honda CR-V Super Bowl ad Honda CR-VJohn Hughes movies are virtual documentaries of what life was like in what 80s (or at least what we remembered it was). Sixteen Candles, Pretty in Pink, The Breakfast Club, are all classics. But for this 80s survivor, ‘Ferris Bueller’s Day Off’ stands head and shoulders above them all. With it’s mild suburban anti-establishment theme, we cheered as Ferris pulled one over on his parents, stuck it to Principal Rooney, drove his sister insane and enjoy a day off in downtown Chicago with the lovely Sloane and his best friend Cameron. Does everyone remember Charlie Sheen’s cameo as the drugged-out guy in the police station?

Now 26 years later, (sorry, I’ll wait a few seconds for you to recover from that shock) 49 year-old Matthew Broderick (yep, 49) is way overdue for another day off. This time he’s sneaking off for a day of adventure around Los Angeles to promote the launch of the 2012 Honda CR-V. With all respect to the good folks at Honda, the CR-V is not even close in the ‘sweet-ride’ department as the Ferrari GT250 California Spyder featured in the original movie. However, trying to jam a couple of child’s car seats and a full load of groceries are tasks much better suited to the CR-V.

The ad will be featured during the Super Bowl this weekend, but the full extended version was released today. The commercial features more than two dozen references to the original movie. If you can spot them, Honda is asking people to post them to Twitter using the #dayoff hashtag.

Filed Under: Automobiles, Sports Tagged With: , , ,

He Tweets, He Scores! Which Team Leads the NHL in Social Media Success?

January 28, 2012 By Leave a Comment

Which team leads the NHL in Social Media?It’s NHL All-Star weekend in Ottawa and the best players in the league are set to face off against each other in the skills competition and of course in the big game Sunday afternoon.

Social Media has become an essential part of any organization’s digital communications strategy, and the 30 teams that make up the National Hockey league are no different. The following is a ranking of which teams are (based on my formula) leading the NHL on the four big social media platforms; Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and Google+. Every team has an active Facebook and Twitter account, only 15 have a YouTube account, and 21 teams have a Google+ page of which 14 are active. I debated whether to include YouTube and Google+ in the final rankings, but in the end I thought it was important to recognize teams that were having success with YouTube and ones that were establishing themselves in Google+. I did not include Foursquare, LinkedIn Groups or Tumblr (the Boston Bruins have an awesome Tumblr page).

It’s obvious when you look at the overall ranking that teams with long histories, strong fan bases and on-ice success are going to rate high. When the numbers were added up the Philadelphia Flyers came out on top, thanks to a top 10 presence on all four platforms. Original 6 teams were in the top half of the list, only the Rangers’ rank suffered at #16 due to their lack of YouTube or Google+ accounts.

To create the individual platform rankings I looked to metrics that would help to show user activity, rather than just rely on number of likes, fans, followers or subscribers to define the team’s success. The numbers in brackets below show where the team ranked on the individual platforms. For example Philadelphia ranked #6 on Facebook, #3 on Twitter, #10 on YouTube and #7 on Google+. When I add these rankings together they add up to 25 which betters Vancouver’s total of 32. You’ll see several teams with rankings of #16 and #22 for YouTube and Google+. For teams that did not have a YouTube account I ranked them all at #16, and for those without any ‘official’ Google+ presence were ranked at #23. (teams with inactive Google+ accounts were rated below the active)

Top NHL Teams on Social Media

  1. 1. Philadephia Flyers (6-3-10-7)
  2. 2. Vancouver Canucks (3-6-16-7)
  3. 3. Detroit Red Wings (4-4-2-24)
  4. 4. Toronto Maple Leafs (7-11-16-1)
  5. 5. Montreal Canadiens (5-15-6-11)
  6. 6. Chicago Black Hawks (1-10-16-15)
  7. 7. Buffalo Sabres (2-7-16-22)
  8. 8. Anaheim Ducks (16-16-1-9)
  9. 9. Edmonton Oilers (12-5-3-25)
  10. 10. Pittsburgh Penguins (14-1-16-16)
  11. 11. Boston Bruins (2-7-16-22)
  12. 12. Los Angeles Kings (15-21-8-3)
  13. 13. Tampa Bay Lightning (18-9-16-5)
  14. 14. San Jose Sharks (10-8-14-17)
  15. 15. Washington Capitals (8-17-16-13)
  16. 16. New York Rangers (9-22-16-12)
  17. 17. Dallas Stars (19-23-16-2)
  18. 18. St Louis Blues (25-13-13-10)
  19. 19. Colorado Avalanche (24-14-16-8)
  20. 20. NY Islanders (26-25-4-22)
  21. 21. Calgary Flames (13-18-12-22)
  22. 22. Nashville Predators (20-12-16-19)
  23. 23. New Jersey Devils (22-19-9-18)
  24. 24. Carolina Hurricanes (27-22-5-21)
  25. 25. Minnesota Wild (17-29-16-19)
  26. 26. Ottawa Senators (23-24-16-22)
  27. 27. Winnipeg Jets (21-27-16-22)
  28. 28. Florida Panthers (29-28-11-22)
  29. 29. Columbus Blue Jackets (28-30-15-20)
  30. 30. Phoenix Coyotes (30-26-16-29)

Facebook

FacebookWith over 800 million users worldwide, Facebook is the reigning king of social media platforms and all 30 teams have active brand pages there. Over 11.5 million people have ‘Liked’ NHL brand pages with the Penguins, Red Wings, Bruins and Black Hawks leading the league with over 1 million fans each. The new Winnipeg Jets have managed to attract 133,838 ‘Likes’ since launching their page less than a year ago on May 31.

To create the Facebook rankings I used total ‘Likes’, ‘People Talking About’ and percentage of total Page Likes Talking About. People Talking About provides a nice ‘snapshot in time’ adding up all the page, post likes, shares, comments, photo tags over the past 7 days. The ranking for each metric was then added together for a final overall ranking for Facebook.

Top 10 NHL Teams on Facebook

  1. 1. Pittsburgh Penguins
  2. 2. New York Rangers
  3. 3. Philadephia Flyers
  4. 4. Detroit Red Wings
  5. 5. Edmonton Oilers
  6. 6. Vancouver Canucks
  7. 7. Boston Bruins
  8. 8. San Jose Sharks
  9. 9. Tampa Bay Lightning
  10. 10. Chicago Black Hawks

Twitter

TwitterTwitter is an ideal place for any fan to stay up to date on the latest news and game updates from their favorite NHL team, and all 30 teams have active accounts. Montreal and Vancouver with 233,664 and 216,747 followers respectively are out on front of the pack, with Pittsburgh trailing in third with 167,246 followers. The Winnipeg Jets are the fastest-rising team on Twitter, they already rank #14 in followers despite only launching on May 31st, of 2011.

The Twitter ranking uses number of total followers, the number of lists the team has been added to, as well as the number of retweets and references in previous the 7 days. The results of these individual metrics are added together to create the final twitter ranking.

Top 10 NHL Teams on Twitter

  1. 1. Chicago Black Hawks
  2. 2. Boston Bruins
  3. 3. Vancouver Canucks
  4. 4. Detroit Red Wings
  5. 5. Montreal Canadiens
  6. 6. Philadelphia Flyers
  7. 7. Toronto Maple Leafs
  8. 8. Washington Capitals
  9. 9. New York Rangers
  10. 10. San Jose Sharks

YouTube

YouTubeEvery second one hour of video is uploaded to YouTube, and a quick search on any hockey team will bring up a long list of fan posted clips. Only 15 of the 30 teams have active YouTube accounts, the remaining teams host video on their main sites using the standard Neulion video player. 2007 Stanley Cup champs, the Anaheim Ducks are the leader on YouTube with nearly 1.3 million total views. Almost half of that total is for just two videos, 375,000 views of the Predators Ryan Suter kicking the puck into his own net in a game against the Ducks, and 199,000 watched Anaheim players attempting to speak Finnish. The NY Islanders, who have had an active YouTube account since September 2006 were second with 730,243 total views. The Red Wings followed in third with 565,250 views followed closely by the Oilers with 554,868.

Top 10 NHL Teams on YouTube

  1. 1. Anaheim Ducks
  2. 2. Detroit Red Wings
  3. 3. Edmonton Oilers
  4. 4. New York Islanders
  5. 5. Carolina Hurricanes
  6. 6. Montreal Canadiens
  7. 7. Buffalo Sabres
  8. 8. Los Angeles Kings
  9. 9. New Jersey Devils
  10. 10. Philadelphia Flyers

Google+

Google+Google+ may only be 6 months old, but in that time it has attracted 90 million fans and many more to come as Google forces new users to sign up for a G+ and Gmail accounts. Some NHL teams such as Toronto, Dallas, Los Angeles, and Buffalo have embraced Google+ and are posting content regularly. 21 of the 30 NHL teams have created ‘official’ Google+ pages, while only 14 of those 21 were active at the time of review.

Teams are ranked on Google+ rankings based on a total of how many circles they have been added to and times they have been +’d. Teams with inactive Google+ accounts were ranked below teams that are active, and teams that have yet to establish any presence were all ranked #22.

Toronto Maple leafs currently lead the league as they belong to 1569 circles and have been +’d 1008 times (as of Jan 27, 2012). Dallas is second belonging to 1231 circles and have been +’d 133 times.

Top 10 NHL Teams on Google+

  1. 1. Toronto Maple Leafs
  2. 2. Dallas Stars
  3. 3. Los Angeles Kings
  4. 4. Buffalo Sabres
  5. 5. Tampa Bay Lightning
  6. 6. Philadephia Flyers
  7. 7. Colorado Avalanche
  8. 8. Vancouver Canucks
  9. 9. Anaheim Ducks
  10. 10. Montreal Canadiens

Hope you enjoyed this social media snapshot of the NHL. I have plans to look at the NFL, NBA, and English Premier League in the near future. Please let me know if you have any suggestions or comments on the way that I ranked the teams.

Now that I have the numbers I’d like to dig down a bit deeper and review the content and engagement strategies that are being used, but first I’m going to relax with a few ‘pops’ and enjoy a weekend of All Star hockey. Cheers and Go Leafs Go!

Filed Under: Social Media, Sports Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
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