You may have heard that Mark Zuckerberg is quite bullish on live video.
A recent Wall Street Journal piece reminded us that Facebook may have overestimated the public’s demand for FB Live while also failing to anticipate that some people would use it to livestream dramatic and traumatic events involving death, destruction and harassment.
But it’s still a great marketing tool, too! For example, AKQA recently used it to help launch Nike’s new soccer/football shoe Hypervenom 3 in London via an event that combined “the finishing prowess of some of the world’s best goal scorers” with “the attitude and energy of the London Grime scene.”
Here’s one of the clips that aired live on the ‘book.
The clips don’t quite highlight the coolest part of the activation, though: “the world’s first full-size interactive LED goal.” Look a bit closer.
We totally missed the peanut gallery at first.
And the videos can’t quite do justice to the goal itself, which included “bespoke animations triggered by an array of 16 motion sensor cameras which tracked the exact placement and speed of strikes as they rained in on goal.”
It’s all part of Nike’s effort to endear itself more to European footballers.
One also can’t quite see the behind the scenes work, which AKQA coordinated with Nike around the live event in London and the Facebook streaming/voting activities. As Manchester United forward Marcus Rashford put it, “I can’t believe how cool it was. I felt like I was in a video game with the digital goal…”
Before you start talking smack, the event scored 2.3m viewers and 700 million impressions. Or so we hear.