The content team at Aston Villa received huge praise – and huge numbers! – for several disruptive transfer announcements throughout 2017 and 2018, including John Terry, Andre Moreira and Lewis Grabban.
But, instead of satisfying everyone, it proved to be a catalyst to be even more creative.
Take the arrival of Yannick Bolasie, for example, from Crystal Palace.
The player had been linked with the club for weeks and there was obvious concern from the fanbase that the top-flight star wouldn’t sign.
It led to plenty of noise on social media, with supporters pleading with the club to get the deal done.
That sparked the idea that became #BolasieAnnounced.
The concept was to take the funniest, angriest, touchiest and tetchiest tweets, package them all up in one video and then conclude with the winger joining in by demanding – Announce Bolasie!
That was followed up by the #BolasieAnnounced hashtag at the end.
Now the concept was there, the player had to be convinced and there wasn’t much needed as Bolasie agreed immediately at the Training Ground.
Indeed, his quotes afterwards summed up his mood: “I loved it! It made me smile that fans were pleased that I came here. It was a great feeling. I’d like to say ‘thank you’.”
With figures showing 36k views and 7k likes on Instagram, 1.4k retweets and 4.1k likes on Twitter, 70k views and 1.7k likes on Facebook, it was the content team who were saying ‘thank you’.
Paul Brown 