Page 173 - Introduction to Electronic Commerce and Social Commerce

162 • Sport, Media and Society

This chapter explores the construction of the sport experience through new media ob-
jects and spaces constituted by the sport brand and the Internet. Developments in inter-
active technologies have expanded the potential for consumers to tailor media sport to
their own requirements. Simultaneously, the dynamism of the brand has enabled adver-
tisers to reconfigure the relationship between producers and consumers of sport goods.

Flagship stores like NikeTown have become brandscapes delivering three-dimensional
multimedia experiences that rival the movies. These interactive environments have the
potential to shift the power dynamics of media sport, as the capacity of consumers to pro-
duce their own meanings has become impossible to ignore. The chapter considers how
users are invited to navigate through the virtual spaces of Internet sport sites. The many
faces of the global Web site http://www.adidas.com are analysed to explore the way the
brand experience is tailored to users located in different geographical locations.

Branding the Experience of Sport

On the tenth day of the tenth month at 10:10 cet, Adidas kicked off its biggest ever
global football marketing campaign to date, which focused on the idea of teamwork.
Their ‘+10’ campaign was launched globally at http://www.adidas.com/football and
involved a wide range of marketing elements. Coots (2007: 28), the Chief Marketing
Offi cer for one of the advertising agencies who developed the campaign, suggested
that major sports events offer a particularly compelling resource for advertisers due
to the ‘conventions of iconography, procedure, ceremony, media coverage, and of
course, the deep emotional current of national pride and lifelong affiliation with a

team of sport’. She further declared that the Adidas campaign ‘breathed life into
every aspect of the World Cup’ (Coots 2007: 28).
The extent of the campaign was enormous, incorporating print, Web, merchandis-
ing, spectacular urban architecture, tournaments and roadshows. A new match ball
‘+teamgeist’ (team spirit) was unveiled, and over 15 million were sold. The ball was
launched in New Zealand in a ‘Be the Ball’ campaign, where consumers who pur-
chased a ball could go on a bungee-like thrill ride called the Sky Screamer that had
been transformed to look like an Adidas World Cup football. An in-ball camera re-
corded the experience, and the resulting video was put onto a DVD that people could
take away. The ride was situated across from New Zealand’s then largest billboard,
featuring England player Steven Gerrard.
The outdoor advertising was particularly striking and included an enormous
Sistine Chapel–style fresco (800 metres squared) of football players at the Central
Train Station in Cologne and a colossal billboard of Oliver Kahn stopping a goal that
stretched across four lanes of the Autobahn in Munich. In addition, Adidas spon-
sored a range of tournaments throughout the world, in which young people competed
to win the right to play in a tournament on the Adidas World Football pitch in Berlin