Sports Marketing 2.0 | Pat Coyle

Lots of talk lately about 2007 being the year of the widget. So it being Super Bowl season, perhaps it’s not surprising that some folks are wondering how widgets migh add impact to Super Bowl Ads. (Sexy Widgets Blog).

While I can’t speak to the value of widgets for a Super Bowl advertisers, I can speak to the ways widgets are working for the Colts, a Super Bowl competitor.

We’ve been working with Clearspring Techologies to test a couple of widget concepts. The first is a slide show widget that scrolls throught the lates action photos from our games. I’ve shown it in the blog before, but here it is again:

Thanks to Clearspring’s syndication servcies, we’re able to track the widget as it travels from site to site. So far it has been posted to over 1,600 sites and has been viewed over 100,000 times. Below is a screen shot from Clearspring’s reporting tool. It is showing the most popular domains where the widget is being posted. Not surprisingly, the widget is most prominent in social networking sites, and on myspace in particular.

It’s pretty cool that 1,600 people think enough of any brand that they’d grab a widget and post it on their personal pages. But for the Colts, this number is surprisingly low. We’ve got millions of people visiting our Website and tens of thousands who have myspace pages, so I wonder why more people aren’t grabbing this widget? Are we not promoting it enough? Are people simply not aware? When people see the widget, do they not realize that they can “grab” it and stick it on their pages? Or do they simply not prefer this particular widget?

I’ve received several E mails from people wondering when we’re going to make a desktop version of this widget. I know Clearspring is working on that and I believe it will really help. We make desktop wall paper for the Colts and it’s really popular.

So how about a Super Bowl widget?

Ever since we won the AFC Championship, I’ve been getting E mails from my friends in Chicago and Indy. Both sets of friends want to start some good old fashioned viral one-upsmanship. They’re looking to talks some digital trash. They want to show their pride by finding and spreading great stuff about their team, or lame stuff about their opponent. If nothing else, they want something to fire back just in case they get dissed by the opposing team’s fans.

With spirits high there is a demand for creative content to help fans enjoy the Super Bowl hype in their own ways. I think the right widget — a widget that could scratch this itch -could really take off. Perhaps a widget that people could post proudly on their personal pages? Something they could wear like a badge that shows they are “down” with their team and they want to let the world know it! Something they could spread to their friends.

Maybe I can get our friends at Clearspring to help us to tackle that assignment. More on this later.