#Euro2016 has an official football, sponsors, very original activations at stadiums, very strict security laws and even an “official drinking cup” to use at stadiums. However, such an important championship always generates situations, actions and events that become really popular.

Official sponsors and brands in general have prepared for this event, actions, events, promotions, offers… with a main goal: become viral. The investigating agency, OMD, has created a report about the different activations taken by brands, mostly Spanish companies, emphasizing the mentions obtained in social media and the fans’ engagement. You can download the whole report from our website.

However, in this Euro’s edition we have found a paradox between the “programmed” and “spontaneous” viral campaigns; the final match between Euro2016 two viral phenomenon: Iceland and North Ireland.

The Match goes on

Iceland’s second goal wasn’t scored by the players, but by a journalist. England Gudmundur, commentator of an Iceland Television (a.k.a. “Gummi Ben”), who narrated the goal with which Iceland qualified for Last16. Together with Argentinan journalist, Víctor Hugo Morales when commentating Maradona’s goal in Mexico’86, it is the craziest goals to be ever by cried.

In North Ireland, the goal was scored by an Irish fan, who started singing about Will Grigg, a striker who plays for Wigan Athletic on English Football League Championship, and is not really known by most of the audience. Grigg didn’t even play a single minute in Euro2016.

Nevertheless, the video “Will Grigg’s on Fire” has become the unofficial anthem of North Ireland and half of Europe’s fans.

These are three examples of spontaneous viral actions (just watch all the mentions, views, versions, etc. on YouTube) that has become a big paradox for brands and companies, do they carry on with their programmed strategy or should they detect and join them?

#Euro2016 has an official football, sponsors, very original activations at stadiums, very strict security laws and even an “official drinking cup” to use at stadiums. However, such an important championship always generates situations, actions and events that become really popular.

Official sponsors and brands in general have prepared for this event, actions, events, promotions, offers… with a main goal: become viral. The investigating agency, OMD, has created a report about the different activations taken by brands, mostly Spanish companies, emphasizing the mentions obtained in social media and the fans’ engagement. You can download the whole report from our website.

However, in this Euro’s edition we have found a paradox between the “programmed” and “spontaneous” viral campaigns; the final match between Euro2016 two viral phenomenon: Iceland and North Ireland.

The Match goes on

Iceland’s second goal wasn’t scored by the players, but by a journalist. England Gudmundur, commentator of an Iceland Television (a.k.a. “Gummi Ben”), who narrated the goal with which Iceland qualified for Last16. Together with Argentinan journalist, Víctor Hugo Morales when commentating Maradona’s goal in Mexico’86, it is the craziest goals to be ever by cried.

In North Ireland, the goal was scored by an Irish fan, who started singing about Will Grigg, a striker who plays for Wigan Athletic on English Football League Championship, and is not really known by most of the audience. Grigg didn’t even play a single minute in Euro2016.

Nevertheless, the video “Will Grigg’s on Fire” has become the unofficial anthem of North Ireland and half of Europe’s fans.

These are three examples of spontaneous viral actions (just watch all the mentions, views, versions, etc. on YouTube) that has become a big paradox for brands and companies, do they carry on with their programmed strategy or should they detect and join them?

Get ready to hear the words “immersive experience” everywhere in the coming years! This will be the brand new phrase used to describe the new audiovisual formats that have just arrived on the web and that you can already find on sites like Youtube and Facebook.

You no longer just have to imagine being at a basketball match played on the other side of the planet, or what it would be like to experience extreme situations with emigrants off the coasts of Lesbos, or what the Gran Canyon in Colorado looks like. Now all of this is available on Youtube and you can watch immersive content as if you were really there. You just need your Smartphone and a pair of cardboard glasses that you can build yourself. Virtual reality (VR, or 360º videos) has really arrived.

The 360 degree videos have amazing effects on their audiences (people were screaming and even felt a bit sick at the World Mobile Congress in Barcelona earlier this year, while they were checking out Samsung’s VR system with a video that simulates being on a rollercoaster). But let’s make one thing clear: we are not reinventing the wheel.

Virtualizing the content

In this sense, mistakes that were made by the prophets of 3D technology are not being repeated with VR. Not all kinds of stories can be told using this immersive experience and today’s audience, used to quick video editing, begins to loose attention after 10 minutes or even worse, starts to feel sick.

What content will use 360º support as standard? Today, technical and artistic research and experimentation go on, like headless chickens. We can already watch documentaries, reports, music videos, concerts… You can find 360º rigs everywhere, shooting anything and everything. During the Fallas in Valencia, even a cremá was filmed. But not everything is about entertainment, the fact of being able to isolate the audience and control its senses allows campaigns like this one from the Ligue Braille in Belgium to be made, where the audience was able to understand and experience the effects of vision loss caused by diabetic retinopathy.

New VR products will go as far as our imagination will take us. While different companies are developing the best production solutions (GoPro, Nokia, Ricoh…), new kinds of audiovisuals are being created and will consolidate the face of online content, going to places that traditional offline broadcasting stations are not able to. The average audience can already decide what it wants to watch, how much of it and when, without depending on schedules. All around the world, we audiovisual professionals are working hard to try and understand where the limits of VR are and what can be produced that is new and actually useful. In Valencia, production companies such as NOP Films are experimenting with all these new possibilities as it prepares new content in these formats for the local public television station RTVV, which aspires to be an interactive TV platform.

A few years ago we started to hear about Marketing of Experiences and the importance for brands to make the consuming process a unique and remarkable experience. This trend started to build up slowly, but it soon consolidated and today is a really used tool.

Actually it is proved that emotions and buying process are strongly related, and therefore it makes real sense that the experiences you have with a brand links you with it, instead of choosing the competence. Starbucks is a great example, as it has converted coffee in a singular experience, creating a lifestyle, a way of understanding coffee similar to “Central Perk” in the famous TV series Friends.

Another example is Disneyworld and its atmosphere, that separates from the rest of recreational parks, offering customers access to a magic world of fantasy where everything is possible. Similar to these we can find energetic drinks, which have found a space and have created a lifestyle, with very powerful images and even associating with other brands. This allow users to take part in the brands’ culture, as they encourage fans to upload videos practising their favourite sport. All of these are examples of how a small brand designs its strategy, creates a lifestyle or, better say, understands life, and manages to build a series of experiences that build an emotional link between clients and the brand.

Sharing and immortalizing the experience

Sport events are not aside from this trend, and therefore they have become a real show, and the consumers’ consumption process is taken into great considerations and care: interaction in social networks, attractive online stores, spectacular sport facilities and arenas with lots of spaces for fans to explore and share with their friends in social media.

This trend has created a great competence, the customers have become more demanding, elevating their expectations towards brands and companies.

It is also becoming essential to incorporate monitoring tools to measure the customers’ satisfaction, as it is the only way to follow and evaluate the efficiency of the actions taken to provide an unforgettable experience.

To conclude, what would be the 7 keys to create an emotional campaign?

Sharing the experience

The app mentioned first had all the information surrounding the sport (video, images, highlights…) so that fans would not miss any of the action. The second appl was designed for the spectators at the stadium to have 2.000 beacon points to know their location in the stadium map or buy products or food in the nearest shops inside the facility.

HD Screens are also placed in arenas, to give better information and entertainment, as well as an attractive commercial option for advertisers and sponsors, for example at Azteca stadium in Mexico.

There are also corporate websites created exclusively for the stadiums and that are independent to the clubs that own them, to give a more information on their services. An example is Allianz Arena, Bayern Munich’s famous stadium.

Entertaining, making the spectators the centre of attention, creating contests such as the famous kiss-cam, or exclusive spaces such as a Valencia’s CF recent action in which they converted a car in an exclusive VIP Lounge, or even preparing activities for the youngest fans (such as videogames). All of these are just examples that help fans to enjoy their experience, such as Texas Rangers do in the MLB.