Page 190 - Introduction to Electronic Commerce and Social Commerce

New Media Sportscapes: Branding and the Internet • 179

The UK Site: Urban Sports and 2012

Accessed on 3 December 2007, the UK Web site featured an animated black and
white sequence of ‘urban sports’, accompanied by music evoking the sound of a
live DJ scratching a beat and then letting it roll. White athletic silhouetted fi gures
were depicted engaging in a series of sporting manoeuvres in a black urban land-
scape, with London landmarks including the Millennium bridge, a tower block, a
London double-decker bus and Marble Arch, picked out in sepia tint. Text overlying
the images delineated the names of the sports: bridge sprinting; flash judo; bus
jumping; urban gymnastics. The sequence ended with the London 2012 Olympic

Games logo, with its urban graffiti connotations, appearing in the centre of a black
paint-like splatter that echoed the 2012 logo’s shape. The Adidas logo joined the

2012 logo, and the text ‘official sportswear partner’ appeared beneath both.
A hyperlink inviting users to ‘See the Impossible’ under the image was connected
to an external YouTube site containing an explanation of the ‘Adidas Urban Chal-
lenge’ campaign, which is the theme of the home page sequence. The campaign chal-
lenged users to upload videos showing themselves engaged in an ‘urban twist’ on an
Olympic or Paralympic event. Users were also encouraged to interact with the site
by becoming subscribers or friends, sending a message, adding a comment or shar-
ing the channel (sending the page URL to a friend). Videos that users had uploaded
included stunts such as so-called urban long jump, which showed someone jumping
over a car, and videos created by a South London parkour group.
The page also included a series of professional videos showing the staging of
events on which the urban sport animation sequence is based. For example, a gym-
nast is shown performing underneath the London landmark Marble Arch, and a pole-
vaulter performs between two London buses. Interestingly, these videos showed that
the sports depicted were very far from urban and are only made to look so by image
manipulation (e.g. the pole-vaulter has a traditional bar and landing mat placed be-
tween two buses, but the animated sequence makes it look like he is, in fact, vaulting
a bus). The interactive dimension of the YouTube site allows for dissenting voices as
well as supportive ones. Comments posted by users about the animated sequence in-
cluded praise (‘looks great!!’) as well as detraction (‘Why are the people at the 2012
Olympics trying to market the Olympics as if it’s a hip-hop event?’).

Meanwhile ... Soccer and Running Gear

On the same day, the home pages for Canada, Latin America, Hong Kong, India, Japan,
Thailand, the Philippines, Australia, New Zealand, the Middle East and South Africa,
as well as the sites for all the European countries, except for the United Kingdom,
showed a sound and moving image sequence combining live action and animation.