The days of sports stadia press boxes exclusively for Radio and TV are over. Ale Combustíveis, a major Brazilian gas distribution company, wanted to sponsor Rio De Janeiro's Olympic Stadium João Havelange (aka "Engenhão") in an interactive and groundbreaking way. Ale wanted to reflect the modern qualities of its brand using a progressive and innovative event that could be executed in the stadium itself. The use of social networking sites in South America increased by 33% in 2009, bringing the total number of unique users to sites like Twitter to over 53,000,000. So for the first time ever, a space was created exclusively for tweeting and liveblogging - the Tweet Box.
In Brazil's most advanced stadium, the Tweet Box (or "Cabine de Tweets") was installed during the autumn of 2010. The box had the same infrastructure as a traditional press box, but among the guest sportcasters, was a host of celebrities, comedians, and social media professionals. The general public could interact with the box by visiting http://cabinedetweets.com.br/. During the matches, everybody who connected at this website could follow the tweets and interact with celebrities by tweeting their own comments at #CabineAle. The followers of the profile @NovoMundoAle then received some of the most interesting tweets, posted during the match.
Results
The first match to utilise this new communications hub was between Corinthians and Fluminense, current 1st and 2nd places at Brazilian Soccer Championship (Corinthians won 2-1). As a result, the NovoMundoAle twitter feed had 2,962 followers and was listed 177 times and #CabineAle is still trending.
This campaign was shortlisted for Campaign of the Year at Festival of Media LatAm2010.