?Cricketer Sachin Tendulkar’s retirement is yet to sink in, as the whole nation is enveloped in gratitude. When a legendary cricketer with an extraordinary career spanning 24 years decides to retire, the farewell is undoubtedly a long and emotional one. The #ThankYouSachin initiative by The Board of Control for Cricket India (BCCI), Twitter India and Digigraph – where fans who tweeted their gratitude using the hashtag received a personalised digital autograph by Sachin – created history by crossing over 3 million tweets!
The farewell initiative by sports channel ‘Star Sports’ is worth a mention too. The Star Sports official website, starsports.com had launched a unique interactive initiative called “The Sachin Memory Project” dedicated to Sachin’s noteworthy career.
The Sachin Memory Project
For a Sachin fan, the Sachin Memory Project serves as an online museum or an archive complete with Sachin’s first taste of success in 1988 aged 14 till his last 200th Test against the West Indies at the Wankhede stadium. All the special moments have been depicted with the help of photos and videos.
As can be seen, one can move right through the timeline to browse through special memories. Each of the visual memories are accompanied by social sharing buttons of Facebook and Twitter. ‘Only videos’ is a section where individuals from the cricketing space share their experiences with the legendary cricketer in video format.
Then comes The Big Picture. As part of the Sachin Memory Project, Star Sports also initiated a unique fan engagement exercise with ‘The Big Picture’. It involved taking high-resolution 360-degree photos of the fans in the entire stadium during special moments. The fans who attended Sachin’s farewell Test series at Wankhede were captured on a large camera and could become a part of the big picture by finding and tagging themselves with their social logins.
For those who couldn’t make it to the stadium in-person, there is the ‘Wish you were here’ feature that enables them to tag themselves in any of the photos.
Once you login through Facebook, the stadium comes alive. You zoom in to that part where you were, find yourself and tag with your Facebook account.You can then share with your friends and family by sharing it through Facebook, Twitter or email. I tagged myself using the ‘Wish you were here’ feature, that needed me to login via Facebook. The Big Picture has only 1852 tags though.
Bonding with Sachin fans
Fans who were at the stadium are going to love the Big Picture. What better way to treasure the special moments and be able to share with your friends and family! For Star Sports, this is a fun fan engagement campaign that helps it bond better while giving the nation’s favourite sportsman a fitting tribute. The Sachin Memory Project coupled with this Big Picture forms a memorable online initiative dedicated to Sachin, while Star Sports becomes an enabler.
Star Sports has also leveraged social media for the Sachin Memory Project, by sharing and encouraging fans and followers to join in.
The Big Picture, although a cool initiative, isn’t a unique one. This IPL6, telecom service provider Vodafone had launched the fan photo initiative called Fancam for the key matches in the league. Similar to the Big Picture, one could find and tag themselves onto the live stadium scenes.
If you’ve been at the stadium, do tag yourself and even if you haven’t, you can add your wish to be there.
Source: Business2community.com
