Starting to see a good deal of online content from brands that are looking to leverage soccer, specifically the FIFA World Cup, but also the UEFA Champions League. You’ll recall of course how ESPN, via the head-bangingly clever Group of Death, kicked things off back in December for the FIFA World Cup draw. Here’s some footage:

More recently, Heineken, a UEFA Champions League sponsor, pulled off this little gem:

Die hard football fans will notice that the orchestra starts to play the Champions League theme song. More on this one over at PSFK.

Puma also tapped into this insight, noting that Valentine’s Day fell on a game day:

Now let’s jump over to Umbro, who’ve done a couple of clever things. First, they launched the new England away kit via a live Kasabian concert.

Then, on Facebook, Umbro gave consumers an opportunity to win custom England jerseys for themselves and several of their friends.

What about Nike? Oh, don’t worry, they are working it too, with a recent press trip that had plenty of bloggers in attendance.

Even the host nation, South Africa, is getting social. In fact they are using crowdsourcing to help generate awareness for everything the country has to offer.

You can participate via Zooppaa.

Ok, perhaps that’s not quite right, although I don’t know, maybe Mayor Bloomberg is a closet Roto guy. But I do know that the company he founded, and that made him a billionaire, has come into the world of Fantasy Sports in a big, big way with Bloomberg Sport’s MLB offering.

A couple of notes up front: I have to thank the folks at Bloomberg Sports who gave me an opportunity to test drive this baby free of charge.

Second, I’ll admit that I’m not the biggest Fantasy Sports guy. Yes, I’ve dabbled here and there with baseball, football, even the international sports like soccer, F1, rugby and yes, even cricket. But strictly as a casual player.  So my analysis of the product will be from that perspective. Do I think a hard-core fantasy player should check it out? Yes, but if you are just a casual player that may change thanks to Bloomberg Sports.

Why? For me the main issue is the user interface. It’s really fantastic. Great photo depictions of the players, not just their names; easy to understand graphics that were richly brought to life; and all available from a single dashboard. When I think of my most recent experience with NFL.com’s Fantasy Football offering, you have to click through pages and pages to find the information you are looking for. Perhaps it’s an apples to oranges comparison – free football game v. top of the line baseball service, but now I see what the difference can be.

Of course being fantasy baseball you expect a ton of data and Bloomberg Sports doesn’t disappoint. But again, I was blown away by the interface. It felt more like stock analytics, with trend charts, bar graphs and a whole host of other data visualization enhancements. Just a ridiculous amount of data, but it was laid out so smartly that I never felt overwhelmed. It would certainly take a novice a day or two to discover all the amazing ways to slice and dice the info, but once you learn the system you’ll spend hours analyzing and comparing players in more ways that you can imagine.

What’s the cost? You can get both the draft kit and the in-season tools for around $30. That seems like a no-brainer if you are half-way serious about playing Fantasy.

I encourage more die hard fantasy players to check out what’s being said about Bloomberg Sports over at The Baseball Analysts. The Biz of Baseball also has a good overview.

Yesterday one of the great traditions in college sport took place as the field of 64 (ok, 65) teams was set for the NCAA men’s college basketball championship. Of course, any time you are selecting a certain number of teams, others are going to be left out. In the weeks leading up to Selection Sunday, we hear about the last four in, and the last four out. These so-called Bubble Teams represent one of the most intriguing parts of the whole experience, as jubilation and heart-ache are exposed and fans witness the raw emotion of 19-year old kids going bananas when they make the torunament. Here’s Baylor from a couple of years ago:

Of course some deserving teams, or teams who feel they are deserving, are left out so every year there is a call for a system that will eliminate the subjective nature of the selections. More metrics, more data, more rules.  Interestingly this is a very similar argument to the cry in college football for a playoff system. In both cases these calls are misguided.

With the possible exception of a thrilling championship game, almost nothing creates as much discussion as “who’s in, who’s out?” in college basketball and “who is really number one?” in college football. Finding out the definitive answer to these questions should be the last thing the NCAA is worried about.

Injustice begets emotion and from that you have passionate discussion. Why would you want to try to squeeze that out? Now, I’m not ready to give the NCAA credit here, I think rather unwittingly they have stumbled upon a key tenent of good Social Media engagement – give people a reason to discuss something they are emotionally invested in.

Now this is different than pro tennis or the NFL using instant replay. I’m all for that use of technology. Nobody wants to see a game or match settled by an inaccurate call. But ranking or selecting teams is entirely different. How can you know, even using all sorts of sophisticated computer modelling, if the 3rd ranked team is really better than the 4th (or 5th), especially if they never played each other? You can’t. What about the 72nd best team as opposed to the 63rd? No way.

The lesson here is, don’t get focused on definitively solving every issue with science. Injustice, anger, joy and heartbreak. Let’s the passion and emotion felt by your audience pour out, and figure out a way to own that conversation and extend it.

Tremendously interesting event yesterday at Pratt. The star-studded panel lived up to its billing and a spirited give and take with the audience of Pratt students, alumni and teachers could have gone on for another hour.  The event certainly left me with several key takeaways that will help to further shape my thoughts on crowdsourcing. Here are some selected (paraphrased) quotes from the panel, along with some of my own personal key learnings:

First, we need to start refining the term ‘crowdsourcing.’ It is currently being used to refer to a whole host of different activites, tactics and executions, some of which are wildly divergent. I heard terms such as co-creation and mass collaboration used and I thought those were interesting. I’ve toyed with the word ‘expertsourcing.’ Better definitions will lead to more clarity.

Chris Clarke, Chief Creative officer of LBi, cautioned the crowd that you can’t make money off of a mastery of technology. By that he meant, knowing how to use tools isn’t enough. This would be a recurring theme.

Ben Malbon of BBH Labs urged people to recognize that the horse had left the barn and rather than fight against crowdsourcing, you should be learning how to master this concept before your competitors do.

Adam Glickman of ideaLists pointed out the importance of filters when utilizing crowdsourcing. This was also a repeated theme from the panelists. In fact, that’s where Clarke saw the opportunity for more traditional agencies as it relates to crowdsourcing. John Winsor of Victors & Spoils agreed that curation was important, and also noted that managing the size of the crowd was an important element.

Mike Samson, co-founder of crowdSPRING, felt that crowdsourcing is a great opportunity for smaller, even local companies and brands to get high quality work at an affordable price.  My takeaway here is that if smaller, even mom & pop shops are starting to get great looking design, that raises the bar across the board. Now everybody is going to have to have great design and now more design jobs and all levels are being created.

Great stat from Ric Grefe, Executive Director of AIGA: About 1 million design students in China, compared to about 40,000 in the U.S. Implication: your competition for jobs is about to expand exponentially. Welcome to the flat world.

This led to the number one takeaway of the evening for me: The difference between design and commercial art. If you are entering a logo design contest, that’s commercial art. Nothing wrong with that, but you’re going to be in a race to the bottom. Design is about problem solving and working intimately with a client.

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