John Terry’s transfer announcement video – a spoof WhatsApp chat involving chairman, manager and players – enjoyed huge numbers on social media.
On Twitter it was 4.7m impressions, 1.7m views, 20k retweets, 27k likes and 1.6k comments. On Facebook there was 1.8m reach, 193k engagement, 585k views, 2.3k comments, 2k shares and 7.8k reactions.
SportBible called it “incredibly original but brilliant”, the Daily Mirror hailed the “outstanding style”, Dugout spoke of a “sensational video”, BBC Sport praised it as “elaborate” while Squawka just proclaimed “Well played, Aston Villa”.
But why opt for this approach?
The club’s content team weren’t the first to get involved in the era of wacky transfer announcements.
But it was certainly at the forefront, alongside AS Roma unveiling Lorenzo Pellegrini by posting a video of the player using his Roma-kitted virtual FIFA self and Liverpool publishing a video of a thumb scrolling through a Twitter stream of posts pleading with them to sign Mo Salah, which turned out to be Salah’s very own digit.
And how about Crystal Palace confirming a new manager by posting footage of white smoke emerging, Vatican-style, from the chimney of a local Caribbean takeaway.
The content team at Villa Park wanted to follow the new trend, absolutely.
But it was about more than that – it was about amplifying interest in John Terry’s arrival at Aston Villa and offering a point of difference from traditional coverage, with other media outlets focusing on avenues including editorial and photography.
It’s also vital to remember that this was a time when the club had dropped out of English football’s top-flight.
The content team recognised that the social media strategy had to be more disruptive to supercharge profile, appeal and numbers when it didn’t have the glittering glow of the Premier League enveloping it.
This disruptive strategy was seen equally emphatically in future transfer announcements during the club’s time in the Championship.
There was a Love Island text, a conversation with Amazon Alexa and how about ‘BolasieAnnounced’, too.
The figures achieved – and the response from fans – demonstrated clearly that this approach worked.
With the John Terry announcement, it is also worth noting that the media and content team were unable to secure time with the player before the announcement was made.
That meant no official photographs could be taken to mark the transfer being released.
So I commissioned the club’s Design Manager to lead with an illustration approach (see above) which worked as a nice alternative – and also proved popular with supporters.
Paul Brown 