In yet another excellent display of fan engagement, Manchester City have proved that they are the Premier League leaders both on and off the pitch. In addition to an\u00a0already extensive list of Social Media activity<\/a>, the Mancunian side reveal this week their newest \u2018Spot-the-Balotelli\u2019 campaign.<\/p>\n

In an article for\u00a0Brand Republic<\/a>, City announced that,<\/p>\n

\u201cThe football club is inviting the 47,000 fans who attended its match against Spurs on 22 January to tag themselves in a 360-degree image on the club\u2019s site and share it on Facebook and Twitter.<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

Avatars of\u00a0Mario Balotelli<\/a>, Sergio Aguero,\u00a0Edin Dzeko<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0Samir Nasri<\/a>\u00a0have also been rendered into the image.<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

Fans who spot them will be entered into a competition to win a signed shirt and personalised video message from the player.\u201d<\/strong><\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I think this is a fantastic idea that has all the ingredients of a successful Social campaign \u2013 an engaging piece of content (the 360 photo), audience participation (finding\u00a0both<\/strong>\u00a0yourself and the fan favourites in the crowd) and a motive (in this case the chance to have a personalised video message \u2013\u00a0something City have done before<\/a>).<\/p>\n

The campaign isn\u2019t overly elaborate, it\u2019s interesting and most importantly, it\u2019s something that hasn\u2019t been done before. The similarity to \u201cWhere\u2019s Wally\u201d will undoubtedly pull at the heartstrings of nostalgic light-blues fans.<\/p>\n

I know that I have a tendency to constantly report on Manchester City \u2013 but I do so because they seem to be the only club in the Premiership that actively puts a lot of effort into coming up with genuine and original creative ideas. It would\u2019ve been too easy for them to have a traditional hashtag competition (which many clubs still don\u2019t do) \u2013 they deserve to be applauded for demonstrating to their fans that they take engagement seriously. It\u2019s no wonder that their Twitter and Facebook channels saw a staggering growth of 20% and 11% in January respectively!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In yet another excellent display of fan engagement, Manchester City have proved that they are the Premier League leaders both on and off the pitch. In addition to an\u00a0already extensive list of Social Media...<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":6176121817,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[69,61,27,67,59,71],"tags":[41,40,39,38,28],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"yoast_head":"\n