Influx

Wieden &Kennedy/U2′s spots for ABC Network’s coverage of the World Cup, capture the power the game has to rise above the field and bring people and countries together.

Now the event is fully underway, you can see this happening around the web, as communities and environments are springing up that allow people from around the world to share their thoughts and ideas.

Some examples are listed below:
Puma’s- Adopt a German campaign
Nike’s Joga community
World Cup Blog- a site with a blog for every country competing in the tournament

The Guardian newspaper does minute by minute match reports and encourages contributions via email from fans, England being called Germany by US commentators, didn’t go unnoticed by English fans.

3,600 photos at one of Flickr’s World Cup photo sharing groups

The challenge for brands and media is to sustain the communities beyond the 3-week duration of the Cup that takes place only every four years. The secret is to build around players and teams and to energize the community with content both online and off. Nike’s Joga3 soccer tournament is a great example of an offline effort. Joga’s 3 on 3 competition has attracted 1 million participants and it’s anticipated that 3 million people will take part by the end of the competition. This is an experience that people will talk about and Nike has the potential to run every year.