Sony Ericsson / SuperFans
Brief
Following the success of the 2009 ‘Looking for a Hero’ campaign, we had our work cut out in 2010 to find a concept that was bigger, bolder, more exciting and more relevant to the changing world we live in. The WTA wants women’s tennis to become the most ‘entertaining and interactive’ sport in the world… in reply we created WTA SuperFans
Strategy
Whilst many sports try and shield their stars from social media, we set about making female tennis the most forward-thinking, interactive and transparent sport of them all. We got excited that social media makes it possible to get closer than ever before to your tennis idols, and believed that a new age sports fan felt the same way.
Activity
The WTA SuperFans website provides a single destination for real-time aggregated and consolidated social media feeds from all the top WTA players. Imagine a website which keeps tabs on every tweet, Facebook post, Flickr photo and YouTube video that the players add to their social media channels. The content is constantly edited, moderated and presented by our in house team. But that’s not all; SuperFans Live extends the programme by providing each avid SuperFan with the chance to get tickets to see their favourite player live. Each player is given a block of tickets to each of their matches to give away to their most avid followers. Lucky winners are given branded shirts and noise makers and given the chance not only to see the match, but to meet their hero.
Results
The SuperFans initiative marks the first time that a major sports league has endorsed, promoted and aggregated the social media channels of its athletes. Over 500,000 fans have joined the programme online and the SuperFans Live experience has helped fans from 8 different countries meet their heros. It has also been a huge success for Sony Ericsson by activating their global tour sponsorship through online, tournaments and broadcast media. Lennard Hoornik, Head of Global Marketing, Sony Ericsson said, “for millions of tennis fans around the world, SuperFans is a service that truly delivers on our brand promise of make.believe. SuperFans will bring audiences closer to tennis, giving them a greater access to unique fan experiences.”