A Win-Win: #MBteamS and Green Bay Packers [UPDATE]

I think I’m going to UPDATE this blog until I’m blue in the face. There’s more blogs about this race coming out every day.

UPDATE: References

Let’s show the power of the higher ed community!

Friday Five: Go #MBTeamS Go!

Under the radar – #sachat needs to follow @tsand

The Power of Social Media – The MB Tweet Race

content + connectivity: analyzing the brand of @tsand.

The #MBTeamS Poster Project

Mercedes Tweet Race Case Study

What #highered can learn from the #MBteamS and @tsand social media win

The best social media is always the most fun

Thoughts About MBTeamS and the (First) Great Tweet Race – mStoner – Blog

Twitter baptism by #MBTeamS

Final score on MBTweetRace.com

Two epic battles occurred in the past week: one on Twitter and the other at the Super Bowl. On Twitter, “Team S” (hash tag #MBteamS) was racing against 3 other teams in the first-ever Twitter-fueled race sponsored by Mercedes-Benz. Team S drove a 2011 Mercedes-Benz S400 coupe from Los Angeles to Dallas, while the other teams drove from Chicago, New York, and Tampa. During the 3 day race, the teams and their Twitter followers accumulated points by completing challenges. The team with the most points won.

Super Bowl XLV was played on Sunday, February 6, in the new Dallas Stadium between the Green Bay Packers and the Pittsburgh Steelers. The billion dollar stadium was completed in June 2009 and is home to the Dallas Cowboys. Attendance for the game was 103,219 people. (FYI: that’s more than the population of Green Bay which was 101,025 in 2008)

Even as I write this, a day after the Super Bowl, both topics are still smoldering on the Internet; still trends on Twitter.

Well, the short story is that both MB Team S and the Packers won. MB Team S amassed 131,643 points! That was more than the combined points of the 2nd (74,092) and 3rd (44,944) place teams. The Green Bay Packers won the Super Bowl 31 to 25; they never trailed.

So how did they win? Promotion.

Todd Sanders (twitter user name @tsand) and John Pederson (@ijohnpederson) were the drivers for Team S. They won the chance to drive in the first ever Twitter-fueled race from a promotion Mercedes held back in late 2010. They, along with their coach Pete Wentz (@petewentz), promoted the race from day one. They were the underdogs according to Twitter follower statistics. Todd works for University of Wisconsin, Green Bay, John works for WiscNet, Madison, and Pete is a famous musician (bassist for Fall Out Boy).

First, the race was a promotion for Mercedes-Benz. They are developing a new line of cars in the coming years and they want young people to drive them. Somewhere in the recent past they must have lost that demographic. This was the first time the luxury automaker has advertised at the Super Bowl.

[Sidebar: I find it a little ironic that Audi and BMW also had ads this year – the 3rd year of economic recession. I guess they’re hurting too and want a wider customer base.]

Second, the race was a promotion for donations to the charities of the coaches. Pete’s charity was St. Jude Children’s Hospital. Mercedes donated $45,000 to the winning team’s charity. Todd and John, additionally, raised over $5,000 from their friends, followers, and the social network community.

Third, the race was a promotion of social media, or, more accurately, the power of social media. Through crowd-sourcing, Todd (it was mainly Todd) was able to reach out to the people that follow him on Twitter and Facebook, and they in-turn reached out to their followers, and so on. With that number of people, most of whom are proficient users of social media, Team S was able to keep their car “full” of tweets – from start to finish – each day.

UPDATE: As the number of references grows, one can really begin to see the power there is in social media, and the influence one man can have on an entire community. Todd even had the cojones to visit us at HighEdWeb 2010 from his home via videos, tweets and pictures; he’s that good.

Super Bowl or Social Bowl?

To coin a phrase, “the Super Bowl ain’t a scene, it’s an arms race.” (Taken from the Fall Out Boy lyrics.) The Super Bowl, or SBXLV, is going social, or more accurately advertisers are turning to social media with ad previews and contests and races (oh my).

Mercedes-Benz, a first-time Super Bowl advertiser, is launching a “Tweet Race” in which four teams use Mercedes vehicles to race to Dallas. The teams are “fueled” by how many times fans tweet using a hashtag from their favorite team. Source: TODAY Show website | It’s the Super Bowl – let’s get social!.

I’m involved, sorta, with one of the teams in this race. Team S (hastag #MBteamS) consists of two Green Bay Packers superfans from Wisconsin, Todd Sanders (@tsand) and John Pederson (@ijohnpederson). Their coach is Pete Wentz (@petewentz), the singer that wrote the Fall Out Boy lyric. I’m twitter friends with Todd because of Higher Ed Web Conference as are a lot of his tech-savvy followers. I also copied one of Team S web pages about Participation on to this blog.

January 30 Texas Weather

So there you have it, 2011, the year we socialize, and we’re kicking things off with Super Bowl XLV, held February 6, the biggest party (i.e. social event) in the world. It promises to be a good game (Packers vs. Steelers) both on the field and on social media; may we all win.

Mercedes-Benz Tweet Race To Super Bowl XLV With #MBteamS

Guide to #MBteamS Victory
Full text available at http://mbteams.com/participate/

#MBtweetrace Prototype Test 2: Parking next to SLS AMG

#MBtweetrace Prototype Test 2 “That’s Close”

Official Site: http://www.mbtweetrace.com/mercedes/prototype/

This effort needs to be coordinated for us to move this vehicle.  That said, there are a few details that our supporters, both Twitter ninjas and Twitter newbies, need to know.  This is still a draft.  Please use the comments below to ask for questions, clarification, etc.

1.  What You Need

You need a Twitter account.  http://twitter.com.

You need to follow @tsand on Twitter.  http://twitter.com/tsand.

If you don’t, can’t, won’t do the Twitter thing, skip down to “Following #MBteamS Online” below.  We understand.  There are other ways to play.

2.  Tweet Fuel

We receive 1 unit of Tweet Fuel each time #MBteamS shows up on Twitter during race hours.

Example:  I am cheering for #MBteamS.

We receive 3 units of Tweet Fuel if you re-tweet something that @tsand puts on Twitter during race hours.

Example:  RT @tsand I may hire my Co-Driver to be my life coach after this trip.  #MBteamS

*IMPORTANT NOTE*

Many Twitter applications, including the Twitter website itself, have a handy “Retweet” button.  This “Retweet” button is poison.  Unless you know what you are doing, it’s always better to manually retweet by typing in…

RT @tsand I may hire my Co-Driver to by my life coach after this trip.  #MBteamS

*UNDERSTANDING HOW TO RETWEET PROPERLY IS A HUGE COMPETITIVE ADVANTAGE*

3.  Challenges

A.  Our primary challenge is to keep the car filled with Tweet Fuel.  This requires you, the Pit Crew, to be typing #MBteamS into Twitter (1 point) and re-tweeting @tsand (3 points).  It’s our job to do fun things along the way in order to keep things interesting.

B.  Mercedes-Benz will be issuing challenges to both Todd and I in the car as well as challenges for our Pit Crew to participate in.  We won’t know what these are until we hit the road.  Follow @tsand at http://twitter.com/tsand for the latest on the challenges and how you can help.

4.  Timing

Understanding timing is key.  We only accumulate Tweet Fuel during race hours.  There is a 30 minute “Fuel Up” period each morning that will be critical as we start each day with no fuel.  Note:  We also “burn” Tweet Fuel on our travel, meaning that we’ll need a nice stream of tweets throughout the day to keep us moving.  We will be stopped if we run out of Tweet Fuel.

Wednesday, February 2

 

Fuel Up:  7:30am – 8:00am PST.  (8:30 MST, 9:30 CST, 10:30 EST)

Race:  8:00am PST. (9:00 MST, 10:00 CST, 11:00 EST)

Thursday, February 3

Fuel Up:  7:30 – 8:00am MST.  (6:30 PST, 8:30 CST, 9:30 EST)

Race:  8:00am MST.  (7:00 PST, 9:00 CST, 10:00 EST)

Friday, February 4

Fuel Up:  6:30am – 7:00am MST.  (5:30 PST, 7:30 CST, 8:30 EST)

Race: 7:00am MST.  (6:00 PST, 8:00 CST, 9:00 EST)

5.  Following #MBteamS Online

Twitter:  http://twitter.com/tsand

 

Follow Todd Sanders on Twitter. Twitter #MBteamS:  http://twitter.com/#!/search/%23MBteamS

See everything that everybody is saying about #MBteamS on Twitter.

Facebook:  http://facebook.com/mbteams

 

We are pushing fun pre-race stuff here for people to play with.

Website:  http://mbteams.com

 

This is a place to tie together many different pieces and parts associated with this adventure.

St. Jude:  http://fundraising.stjude.org

 

We have a site with St. Jude where we are trying to raise an additional $5,000 for our charity.  St. Jude received $25,000 for our participation and another $20,000 if we win this thing.

Spread it. Include #MBteamS in your Tweets