360DigitalInfluence

The 2010 FIFA World Cup kicks off this afternoon, but you don’t have to be in South Africa to be a part of the crowd.

Emirates, a sponsor of the FIFA World Cup 2010 started the Twexican Waveto get rabid football (soccer) fans amped for their favorite teams within the context of the Emirates brand. Users go to www.twexicanwave.com and register their “wave” profile picture (a pic of themselves with their arms in the air) then tweet using #twexicanwave. If #twexicanwave is tweeted without a registered picture, the wave breaks and a new one begins. So why participate? If you are part of the longest wave you’ll be entered for a chance to win Emirates FIFA World Cup packages…so it might just be worth uploading a ridiculous picture of yourself to your Twitter profile, and getting all of your followers to to join the wave.  

As of today, the longest wave is 125 people. We’ll be watching this one closely to see if the virtual wave makes it around the digital stadium.

Besides its relevance to World Cup kick off we like this initiative because it reminds us to think about simple ways to build brand awareness by connecting fun and familiar behaviors with established social media platforms.

* Special thanks to my colleague Annabel Brown in Sydney for bring this fresh thought to the table.