Page 192 - Introduction to Electronic Commerce and Social Commerce

New Media Sportscapes: Branding and the Internet • 181

showed the soccer player Messi painting stick figure legs and feet on a large canvas
and saying, in Korean, that disadvantage can be an advantage (referencing the idea
that Messi’s short stature gives him extra speed). By following the hyperlink at the
end of the sequence, the user was taken to the ‘Adidas Impossible Is Nothing’ site.
On clicking the ‘enter’ link (an image painted on a whitewashed brick wall), the
image changed to one of Messi idly balancing a ball on his head and roaming around
a sparse artist’s studio. The soundscape was made of slowly morphing drones, while
the cursor rolling over parts of the image created short, musical, electronic percus-
sive bleeps and moved the image around to reveal unseen parts of the studio. The
overall effect was one of artistic contemplation. On the US site, a similar background
and soundscape featured Reggie Bush as the central character.
On the day we accessed the Adidas Web site, Adidas presented different home
pages to individuals ostensibly located in different geographical locations. Neverthe-
less, every home page was accessible, wherever the user was located, simply by se-
lecting the country from the drop-down menu. The flexibility of the brand remained

able to organise the interactivity of Web users and to engage with their own versions
of the Adidas experience. The constantly present Adidas logo surrounded the activity
within the Websphere, bringing all its diversity into the frame of the brand. The Adi-
das Web site illuminates some of the potential for new interactive engagements with
the sport media made possible by developments in technology. It also shows how
capitalism constrains possibilities for the consumers of media sport, while appearing
to promise them individual choice.

CHAPTER SUMMARY
• The brand can be understood as a new media object that organises the in-
teraction between producers and consumers of sport goods and events

• The logo is the flexible face of the sport brand, framing and connecting di-
verse product ranges; sport celebrities are regularly associated with brands
to create relationships between producers and consumers, but sport crises
can have adverse effects on brand image
• Brandscapes like NikeTown have made brands a three-dimensional enter-
tainment experience
• The Internet has altered the way that people consume sport, creating new
opportunities for interactive engagement with mediated sport; characteris-
tics of the new media include multimodality, permanence and ephemeral-
ity, unboundedness, intertextuality, multilinearity and multivocality
• The new media promise new pleasures and new identities, but despite the
global presence of the Internet, access is still very restricted; similarly,
sport Web sites can present multimedia experiences for users to navigate,
creating their own meanings, but nevertheless, choice remains largely
circumscribed