Digital Media Cafe Blog – Featuring Glasgow 2014, Dougie Lampkin, WRC and NBA – David Granger
August 6, 2014
Hello and welcome to this week’s Digital Café Blog. In this edition we’ll take a look back at the best and the slightly dubious moments from the Commonwealth Games, test drive a new motorsports app which is one of the most comprehensive we’ve seen and your social media star is a man with 12 world titles under his belt.
Commonwealth Games: When Selfies Bomb
The Commonwealth Games provided not only great sporting spectacle, but also a whole lot of social media excitement. Twitter stated that more than 3.3million tweets were sent throughout the 11 days with the opening ceremony being the event that drove the most traffic and Usain Bolt was the most discussed athlete with more than 140,000 mentions – not all of them were good though after his somewhat derogatory comments in The Times.
Aside from the Jamaican’s view of the games, two other social media happenings caught our eye. The first was the embarrassing Royal Family does photobombing with The Queen and Princes Harry and William all getting in on the act making all those selfies seem like bad dad dancing at the disco, but perhaps the best piece of viral content came from Irn Bru with its patriotic YouTube clip which celebrated the underdog as the Games closed. Irn Bru do a great line in satire, their Irn Bru Music parodies the real-life Red Bull Music Academy and this video is in a similar vein with a voice over proclaiming Scotland may take more little steps than giant leaps, but this is what makes their metal. Well worth checking out, far funnier than a Royal photobomb.
Athletes Getting It Right: Dougie Lampkin
Our social media star for this week is Dougie Lampkin, MBE, the English motorcycle trials rider who’s been not only a World Champion 12 times, but also appeared in the seminal Junior Kick Start in the early 90s. His Twitter and Facebook feeds both display – as well as his competitive side – a love for both his sport and his fans. They are well worth checking out.
WRC: Fast track to New Motorsports Experience
A new web-based interaction element for motorsports was launched at the weekend. WRC+ means fans get the opportunity to decide when, where and how they want to access the drama from the special stages of the tough competition for production-based cars.
And, while fans can currently subscribe at www.wrcplus.com from the German round of the championship later this month, WRC+ will also be available through the official WRC App on both iOS and Android. There will be no excuse not to join in.
@NBA: A Whole New Social Ball Game
And finally, it’s been described by those in the know as “about acknowledging our social media-savvy fans”, it’s a way of encouraging tweets to athletes apparently and another way to tap into almost 40 million fans worldwide. Big claims from the NBA and a bold move to change one of the icons of the sport. Yes… they’re putting @NBA on the Spalding basketballs from here on. It will be interesting to see what sort of a major upturn in engagement and reach this minor alteration will make.
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Having spent eight seasons in Formula One managing the digital channels for world champions Red Bull Racing, David Granger now runs Fact 51, a social and digital content agency.
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