What would the social world have looked like if the space was active during “The Play” the legendary ending of the 1992 Cal-Stanford game that concluded, after five laterals, with Cal running through the Stanford band on the way to the end zone after time expired? We got a taste of what it would have looked like this past Saturday, as the Miami Hurricanes pulled the bizarre, improbable, and somewhat illegal, multiple lateral dash into the record books in their last second upset at Duke.
The folks at IMG College’s digital division gave us a great look at the play from many levels, including showing how U of M effectively used the social space to not just retell, but expand, organize and ignite the conversation even more. Some key engagement points included:
A sleek and sharable infographic that illustrated the convoluted (but effective) route the return unit took to the end zone.
Twitter as expected blew up as well, so Miami curated a Collection in Tweetdeck and utilized the new Twitter for Web display to embed the night’s top tweets from fans, media, and players, on HurricaneSports.com
Also, the Canes took to Twitter on Sunday to offer their take on the controversy surrounding the play — with what had to be the tweet of the weekend — and saw engagement at a rate 441x greater than average for @MiamiHurricanes.
All these things do not happen in a vacuum, and the expanded reach showed how important it is to think, and then act, in a creative and forward thinking manner to fully exploit a unique moment. Nice job Miami in grabbing the unexpected and running with it.
