Beer brand Pilsen is measuring Colombian football fan passion levels with a mobile app that leverages its sponsorship of the country’s oldest club Deportiva Independiente Medellín (DIM).
DIM, who currently play in the Colombian first division, are a legendary team in the country with five national championships. Nicknamed the ‘Poderoso’ (‘The Mighty’), the team is perhaps even more well known in South and Central America for the extreme passion displayed by their supporters.
So official beer sponsor Pilsen took on the challenge of finding out just how committed the team’s fans actually are.
Working with DDB (Bogota), the sponsor built an app which notifies the user when a DIM match is about to kick off and then measures the intensity of the user’s movements and voice (jumps and shouts) during the game. It’s user interface displays a graph of individual supporter passion throughout the 90 minutes of the match and gives each fan a personal score.
These scores can then be shared on Facebook and Twitter so fans can compare their commitment with one another and build friendship group commitment and passion league tables.
Pilsen is owned by Bavaria SA, the largest drinks company of Colombia, and steers a slew of other Colombian beer brands including Águila, Águila Light, Club Colombia, Cola & Pola, Costeña, Costeñita, Peroni, Pilsen, Póker, Redd’s and Pony Malta.
Pilsen has been an official sponsor of the club for more than seven years and is the team’s main shirt sponsor. But eyeballs on a logo is no longer enough in contemporary sponsorship, so supporting activations like this that engage the fans and contribute to the live spectator experience are a necessity.
Comment
Encouraging and driving fan passion as long been an activation objective of sponsors, but in 2012 we have seen a marked increase in the number of leverage devices that actually measure the degree of crowd support.
If 2011 was about mobile app games and participation (such as Heineken’s Champions League Star Player and Budweiser’s FA Cup Man Of The Match), 2012 has been the year of measuring and comparing fan passion.
Examples of this include Orange’s Euro 2012 Fan App, McDonald’s Euro 2012 Fan Passion Meter and Sharp’s Euro 2012 Fan Labs initiative.
Mobile apps that link to social media have been the most popular contemporary channels for this trend.
In response to some of the concerns over second screening initiatives, this Pilsen app doesn’t encourage fans to shift their attention away from the game and to a supporting screen or secondary device. Instead, it remains in a pocked and records jumps and cheers without taking attention away from the live action.
An initiative like this means less direct fan-brand interaction, but also less disruption.
It should also lead to better in stadium atmospheres and drive higher levels of support through competitive passion. And for those who love watching live football that can only be a good thing.
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