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Tag: Wayne Rooney

  • Vanja Milinkovic Signs Deal with Manchester United

    Yesterday, Manchester United finished its tour in the United States with yet another victory, this time over rivals Liverpool. The victory sealed the International Champions Cup for the British team which went 4-0-1 in its five game stretch in the States. However, the tour victory was not the only good news to come to Man U yesterday.

    According to its official site, Manchester United finalized a deal to sign 6’7″ goalkeeper Vanja Milinkovic yesterday. The deal has Milinkovic being loaned back to his former Serbian SuperLiga club, FK Vojvodina, until the end of the season, at which point Milinkovic will join the Red Devils.

    While one can be positive that FK Vojvodina is going to mourn the loss of Milinkovic, who made six appearances for Serbia in the UEFA European Under-17 Championship (including a 1-1 draw with Germany), club president Zoran Scepanovic had nothing but positive words for both Milinkovic and Manchester United in his press conference statement:

    After lengthy talks that have taken place over the past month, we have finally completed negotiations on Monday and we can officially inform the public that our young and promising goalkeeper has joined Manchester United. He will remain in Vojvodina for the next year, where he will be under the supervision of our experts and coaches from the English football giants, while continuing to train and perform in the jersey of his home club. This is an opportunity to thank everyone who participated in the realisation of this transfer. Can I point out Manchester United’s very correct attitude.

    Once Milinkovic arrives at Old Trafford, though, his route to stardom will not be easy. Manchester United already has two stellar goalies between the posts – David De Gea (who is only 23 himself) and Anders Lindegaard. Some may question Man U’s decision to bring in another goalie when there is already much competition for the starting position, but the attitude of Lindegaard will prove invaluable toward helping Milinkovic develop his talents to the utmost level. When asked about his perceived frustrations backing-up Spanish international goalie De Gea, Lindegaard displayed a positive and healthy attitude:

    I have to try and be objective, and raise myself up above just myself and see it from the club’s perspective and how much pressure we have been under. Then it is easier for me to understand why things are the way they are. For me it is all about being a happy human being. I am that now at Manchester United. It is my club since I was a small kid. This is my dream.

    Manchester United hopes that the addition of Milinkovic, along with new manager Louis van Gaal’s announcement to name Wayne Rooney captain, will lead to much more success in the 2014/15 season, especially coming off of the bitter quarterfinal round knock-out in the 2014 UEFA Champions League tournament to Bayern Munich.

    Image via YouTube

  • Nike Admonished For Wayne Rooney Twitter Ad Campaign

    If you are an athlete, actor, musician, etc. – just how far do you have to go to make it clear to your social media followers that a communication is serving as a sponsored advertisement?

    That’s the issue at the heart of a decision concerning England soccer star Wayne Rooney and Nike. The UK’s Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) struck down Nike’s “Make it count” Twitter campaign after a tweet from Rooney and another soccer player failed to meet the guidelines for transparent ad practices.

    Below is the tweet in question. Rooney sent this out to over 4 million followers on January 1st. As you can see, the tweet includes an inspirational message along with the hashtag #makeitcount. The link takes you to a Nike product website.

    Fellow player Jack Wilshere posted a similar tweet near the same time that read,

    “In 2012, I will come back for my club — and be ready for my country. #makeitcount.gonike.me/Makeitcount”

    Wilshere has since deactivated his account.

    These tweets ran afoul of the ASA, whose job it is is to “keep UK ads legal, honest, and truthful,” according to their statement. They ruled that the tweets didn’t properly reference Nike and that Rooney and Wilshere’s followers could clearly mistake the tweet for one that wasn’t sponsored. Nike argued that the Nike url was enough and that people clearly associated Rooney with Nike anyways.

    “We considered the average Twitter user would follow a number of people on the site and they would receive a number of tweets throughout the day, which they may scroll through quickly,” said the ASA. They added that the rules specify that “marketing communications must be obviously identifiable as such.”

    Or, as the Committee of Advertising Practice (code writers for the independent ASA) explains it:

    The ads that were the subject of today’s adjudication were tweets setting out their footballers’ resolutions for 2012. The footballers in question sent personal as well as advertiser-sponsored messages from their Twitter accounts. Nike pointed out that the tweets included the hashtag #makeitcount and the URL gonike.me/makeitcount, and argued both the individuals (Wayne Rooney and Jack Wilshere) and their clubs (Manchester United and Arsenal) were widely known to be sponsored by Nike.

    The ASA, however, noted the “Make it Count” campaign had launched around the same time that the tweets were sent, and considered that readers might not recognise “make it count” as a Nike marketing campaign. Even though the ads included links to a Nike website, and some readers might have inferred from that that the primary purpose of the messages was to promote Nike, the ASA considered that it would not be obvious to all readers that the whole tweet was a marketing communication. This is an important lesson: ads must be not just potentially identifiable as advertising but obviously advertising.

    They suggest that in the future, tweets could include #spon or #ad hashtags to make them obvious.

    Of course, social media advertising is a different animal than traditional media advertising and the lines are a bit blurrier. It seems that the thing that makes a Twitter or Facebook campaign so effective – how ads morph into the flow of everyday communications – is exactly why the ASA came down on Nike.