Last week I wrote about my friend Todd Sanders (better know as @tsand) competing in the world's first "twitter fueled race" to the Super Bowl. If you've been under a rock (or unfollowed me because the #MBteamS hashtag was driving you batty) then here's the race in a nutshell:
They won.
The other teams (including the celeb tv host) never even got close enough to feel the exhaust from Team S's car:
What does this tell you? Team S got it right: They engaged their higher ed community, made it fun with pictures, video and tweets, and made it clear that without their supporters, they might not have made it out of California. Indeed, by Day 3 the team challenges from HQ were getting harder and harder, and the scavenger hunt could ONLY have been won by their team members. Behind the scenes, people were organizing Google docs, coordinating who knew people in which state who could take pictures of landmarks and submit them to #MBtweetraceHQ for verification. It was, quite honestly, the best example of collaborative effort in which I've ever played a part. I'm not sure what sort of support the celebrity coach was supposed to offer; our team was never really able to rally those followers. But I think it's fitting--and compelling--that @tsand was able to leverage his own brand and higher ed community to do it on our own, without celebrity help or endorsement. This community was engaged and invested in the outcome of this race and that investment was, quite literally, how the higher ed community blew the competition out of the water. The only time there was a follower spike by another team was by Team CL, whose coach, @serenawilliams (actually, it was @RevRunWisdom--thanks, @kuratowa, for the correction!), actively called on followers to assist the drivers. Without continuous encouragement from the celebrity coach, however, they simply couldn't sustain a last ditch effort.
I'm thrilled the higher ed team won, happy for @tsand and @ijohnpederson (not to mention their wives, who get the prize cars), exhausted from the effort of watching and participating, and pretty much sick of twitter, yet still feeling odd not hashtagging every tweet I put out into the ethers. I noticed others are already jumping on the bandwagon; Ford is launching a Focus Focus Rally that sounds practically identical to the Mercedes-Benz Tweet Race. No need to worry about me, however. I, for one, have had puhlenty of twitter racing to last me for quite some time.
The only thing that besmirches the experience is that I'll be eating cheese flavored crow for a while, because the #MBteamS's beloved Green Bay Packers also won the Super Bowl. But I think of everything the guys went through on this amazing journey, the $50,323 donation they earned for St. Jude's, and somehow I'm oddly happy that @tsand got the entire week of his dreams. Even if it did have to come at the expense of Steelers fans.
But I'm sure that will pass.
Just wanted to say that I appreciate your recaps about this... it's the most succinct version of what was going on that I've read, and I was happy to have someone break the whole story down for me so I could stop going "WTF?!"
I love your points regarding the celebrity participation. I think Mercedes thought that the teams would need the numbers that their "Twitter-savvy coach" brought to the table in order to rally support. In the end, nothing could have been further from the truth. The fans of Serena Williams are not *really* a community beyond the fact that they like Serena Williams enough to follow her on Twitter. They certainly did not really care about Team CL, and could therefore only muster a temporary "meh" style response to her call to participate. Team S on the other hand was a real community that already cared about our team, celebrity coach or no celebrity coach.
Thanks for posting. I think even more than being engaged in the outcome of the race, the community was engaged with each other. I never been so dedicated or laughed so hard at a Twitter stream than I did last week, mainly because of the people involved.