Heineken Star Player Taps into Fan's Love of Prediction

Soccer is my favorite sport. I've spent many Saturdays and Sundays at the pub watching soccer with my friends and strangers. And, I've definitely overheard and joined in many conversations attempting to predict the action on the field: "Oh, Gerrard is definitely going to score. There's no way he'll miss. I bet he goes for the top left corner." "How in the world did Rooney get a penalty there? I mean he didn't step on anyone's crotch this time!" So, it's not surprising that when Heineken StarPlayer by AKQA launched I would be interested.

Fans of sports love to predict what their team, their rivals, the refs, etc. will do. Through predicting behaviors and actions on the field, fans feel connected to the action, almost like they themselves are calling the shots. It opens the door to being part of something larger than oneself. It creates a community. A perfect example is the Boston Red Sox Red Sox Nation. Heineken StarPlayer taps into this existing behavior and expands it from the real-world into the digital space via mobile (iPhone only for the moment) and Facebook. It creates a game within the game.



As noted in the Creativity Online write-up, here's how the app works: "Heineken StarPlayer is a 'dual screen' soccer app that lets fans watch UEFA Champions League (UCL) matches on TV while they play the game in real-time.

The game can be played on a PC, iPhone or iPod touch and is downloaded from iTunes or played on the Heineken Facebook page. To score points, players anticipate events unfolding on the pitch live and make decisions on what will play out. When a key event occurs, the app triggers in real-time a 'Match Moment' and gamers are asked to choose from outcome options (for example, will that goal go in?). Players can compete and share scores with their friends, via Facebook, as well as other players around the world."

Online game results in an offline solution

I am always interested in seeing how digital trends and emerging technologies manifest themselves in the real world. I love the idea of taking the online world offline and the offline world online. This is already happening in city-wide scavenger hunts using tools like Foursquare and Twitter to pass on clues and through billboards like GranataPet dog food billboard in Germany.




Now, we have another interesting idea coming out of the UK - "Real Life Farmville." According to an article today in PSFK, "a large working farm will be taken over for the first time by web users across the world on Wednesday, who will vote on every key decision taken on its cattle, pigs, sheep and crops. The MyFarm experiment hands over power at the National Trust’s 2,500-acre Wimpole Estate farm in Cambridgeshire, UK. Up to 10,000 farming novices will choose which bull to buy, which crop to plant and whether to spilt fields to resurrect lost hedgerows."

MyFarm experiment capitalizes on the existing popularity of Farmville, which currently has 47 million players a month and is the second most popular game on Facebook, to help people understand where their food comes from.

As stated in the article: "'The National Trust is the UK’s biggest farmer,' said Fiona Reynolds, its director-general. 'This is all about reconnecting people to where their food comes from. Our TNS poll showed that only 8% of mothers feel confident talking to their children about where their food comes from. That’s really poignant.'"

It will definitely be interesting to see how the MyFarm experiment shapes up. Personally, I would love to see it succeed.

Back from the dead

So, it's been about a year since my last post. Needless to say, it's been a pretty busy year with work and living life (yes, I did run a marathon while not writing my blog). This, of course, has resulted in my choice to almost exclusively use tumblr to post quick videos and comments on things I find interesting.

However, lately I've found myself thinking about the idea of mentorship, professional development and the workplace. Throughout my career, I've had different mentors at different times. In one job my boss was a mentor. In other jobs, my team members were. And, in several cases, my mentor has been someone working in the industry but not at my company (this can be refreshing because it allowed me to be truly open and honest about situations, concerns and questions). Traditionally, the belief is that your boss should mentor you. However, this is not always the case and frankly doesn't always work (even though it can be great when it does).

As my friend, Anya Kamentz, states in her Fast Company article, A Case for Changing the Way We View Mentors: "We need a new model of mentorship. We're living in an age of networks, not hierarchies; knowledge and wisdom is distributed, rather than concentrated among the gray hairs. Moreover, we're bringing more of ourselves to work and we're often chasing meaning over profit. The new model has to be more flexible and forgiving, to allow for the fact that mentorships, like any relationship, come in different flavors and change over time."

Thanks to digital communications, we can connect and learn from people all over the world in meaningful and effective ways. Blogs, conversations on LinkedIn (both personal and within groups), Facebook groups and Twitter are opening doors that previously weren't visible. That being said, there are currently a few blogs I look to for industry advice and growth within the planning discipline. Additionally, I have also connected with some of the writers via LinkedIn and Twitter, allowing me to continue the conversation in a more meaningful way. Here's a list of some of my favorites, in no particular order:

• Gareth Kay's Brand New: Head of Planning at Goodby in San Francisco
• Carlos Henrique Vilela's  BR Planning: Planning Manager at Filadelfia in Brazil
  He has a really awesome series in his blog that any aspiring and junior to mid-level planner should check out - Advice for the Next Generation Planner
• Mark Pollard's Life. Then Strategy: Strategy Director at McCann Sydney in Australia. *He just became the SVP, Global Planning Director at Saatchi & Saatchi in New York as of May
  One of my favorite posts is his post, "Why the World Doesn't Need Another Digital Strategist."
• Heather LeFevre's Buy Me, I'll Change Your Life: Head of Planning for Strawberry Frog in Amsterdam
  She's also the mind behind The Planner's Survey, a great tool to assess what's going on in planning around the world, what salary ranges are in different locations and in different positions, etc.
• Ana Andjelic's i [love] marketing: Senior Planner at Huge in New York

Who are some of your favorites?