Sports Insight & Trend report

A highly creative company.

Our latest digital insight focuses on sports brands and organisations, and highlights some of the more innovative things we’ve seen recently. We’ve taken a look at a broad range of platforms in this report to cover the breadth of the sports sector. Beginning with websites themselves and the best examples of web based design and content. We then take a look at mobile and tablet devices, and see where brands are using audiences and social media to create user-generated content.Finally we highlight some interesting uses of technology to show how even the most innovative technologies can fit within more consumer-oriented concepts.

Sports Digital.

Sports digital report. Interacting with your audience.

The best of the web.

For sports brands, the .com site is an incredibly strong channel and we see some of the richest browser experiences delivered in this space. The art in creating a great experience here is still about mixing highly compelling content, beautiful product showcase and well-integrated interaction and social connectivity.Here’s a quick tour of some of the best examples we’ve seen lately.

Puma SailingThe Puma Sailing site is packed full of fantastic content and with the Volvo Ocean Race underway the content is regularly updated for the keen sailors amongst us. The mix of race specific video and image media is balanced well with wider sailing news. It’s a little disappointing not to see more oceanographic led content to follow sailing routes or live races as this could really improve the stickiness and repeat visit value.http://www.puma.com/sailing

Burton SnowboardingThe Burton Snowboarding site for 2011/2012 recently launched and as always is high concept. The site launches with a fun parody take on retro news anchoring to “Welcome Winter” and to announce the coming storm that is 2012 product range dropping into Burton dealers. The rest of site is a great mix of editorial, product exploration and location aware dealer signposting.http://global.burton.com

Product showcaseExperiencesContent

Nike SBNike SB is one of the glossiest of the skate brands out there and have the budgets, team and content to match. What stands out about the Nike Skateboarding site though, is not simply the high production values of the video and image content but an interesting site navigation system and layout. It’s big on type and high fidelity imagery and overlays panels of content for users to sweep and glide through – not your typical skate site.http://www.nikeskateboarding.com

MavicAnother very nicely executed site, this time from the world of Pro Cycling. Mavic have a long heritage in the technology of pro cycling, both on and off-road, and the site manages to capture this brilliantly. The brand is iconic and this translates through to bold use of images, colour and type on the site. Although it leads on product and innovation, some strong editorial content makes a nice contrast against this. It would be great to see little more social sharing and community content to top of the package.http://www.mavic.com


The best of the web.Rich visualsImmersionBrand


Mobile/tablet.The Red BulletinThe Red Bulletin, Red Bulls lifestyle magazine for both traditional digital media has been well established and each digital issue on the iPad delivers high octane, high adrenaline content. The apps are great to navigate and the content is super-stylish. The only slightly disappointing side of the magazine as a whole is that the web experience is quite limited in contrast to the app. http://www.redbull.com/cs/Satellite/en_INT/Red-Bulletin-iPad/001242991025466

Australian Open iPad appiPads and Mobile devices provide a great way of enhancing the experience of live events, from Formula 1 cockpit data and driver trackers to NFL team statistics provided by CBS Sport. One app that stood out for us was the Australian Open Tennis grand slam app. As well as accessing the all-important live game data, player profiles and news, one stand out feature was a scrapbook-style autograph tool that allowed fans to collect digital autographs of the players.http://www.australianopen.com/en_AU/ news/articles/2011-01-11/201101091294613833532.html

Manchester City AcademyWhere mobile comes into it’s own is delivering personal content away from the home and Manchester City’s training app for their Academy is a great example. It takes a wide range of content from the established football skills scheme and delivering into the hands of players out on the parks, pitches and training grounds. It’s packed with videos and coaching tips for everything from an informal kick about to a more structured coaching session. http://ecademy.mcfc.co.uk/

Editorial contentInnovationAccessibility


Social & Crowd-sourcing

Sony Ericsson Xperiashots Tennis channelThis particular channel for Sony Ericsson’s Xperia is a great example of creating content specifically with social media in mind. The web and mobile video content gets fans closer to some of the rising stars of women’s tennis and pitches them against challenges and stunts. Users get involved through voting on top content. The channel visual design is really well executed too by being both highly visual and well integrated within a double height YouTube channel header.

Fred Perry Whilst having been around for a while now, Fred Perry’s Tell Us Your Story site has a really strong aesthetic feel. The content uploaded is mixed though and shows that when you do seek out content from your customers it important to moderate and editorialise the content you receive.http://www.fredperrytellusyourstory.com/stories

Speedo’s Unforgettable Swims Taking the crowd sourced concept and ‘swimming with it’ - Speedo’s latest campaign site for Unforgettable Swims has really delivered a neat concept. The site seeks out submitted stories of unforgettable swims and presents them with a reportage styled, editorial slant. Visually the site leads on photography and type and, unlike lots of UGC content, crafts the content to feel consistently on-brand.http://unforgettableswims.speedo.com

User generated contentParticipationSharing


Technology

New Balance – Urban Dash GameWith more than a passing reference to the Mini Getaway in Stockholm game of last year this New Balance game, created to promote the opening of the New Balance flagship store, places virtual batons on the streets of NYC. Runners collect them via an iPhone app for a chance to win trainers and a $20k gold bar.http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AqgkCli2OZM

Tweeting from the highest peak on earthAnd if you thought you struggled to get 3G signal, spare a thought of British climber Kenton Cool, who earlier this year managed to be the first to tweet from the summit of Mt Everest. Thanks to a Nepalese Telco and Samsung who helped the whole thing happen.https://twitter.com/#!/KentonCool/status/66298015043948544

Nike+ Dynamic Run Store VisualsWe’re always suckers for data visualisations and this one is super slick. It takes 12 months worth of Nike+ data from New York and creates a graphic store installation. A nice touch is that the visualisation allows individual users to sync their runs to create a personalised data painting.http://player.vimeo.com/video/26399542

GamingExtreme tweetingData visualisation

The bottom line.

Sam Allen Head of Business Development Direct +44 020 7239 9283 [email protected]

Studio Output / London Unit 5, The Piano Works 117 Farringdon Road London EC1R 3BXTel +44 020 7239 9270 Fax +44 020 7239 9279studio-output.com

We have an exciting, relevant way of working that delivers great results. Our understanding of the youth market ensures our work is always effective and fresh.We've sent you this as we'd really like to work with you. Please give Sam a call if you'd like to discuss ideas for your brand.

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Sports Insight & Trend report