Tweeting Jo-Wilfried Tsonga to Victory

nicolas.billieres

Last Wednesday, after several weeks of hard but gratifying work, the team here at We Are Social in Paris served up one of our most groundbreaking campaigns to date.

As you may have read in Creativity, Campaign or Creative Review last week, we’re working with BNP Paribas to help train Jo-Wilfried Tsonga, French No. 1 and World No. 8, through Twitter ahead of the French Open.

This exciting campaign marks 40 years of partnership between BNP Paribas and Roland-Garros – The French Open. It enables members of BNP’s We Are Tennis community – as well as tennis fans and social media users everywhere – to enjoy a unique and memorable sporting moment, which unites them in a common goal: to help a world-class tennis player achieve victory at one of the year’s biggest tournaments!

The big day takes place in France this Thursday, the 23rd May, at 5pm CEST (11am EDT, 4pm BST). At a tennis court in a top secret location, Jo-Wilfried Tsonga will take on shots fired at him that have been carefully chosen to challenge him by tennis fans worldwide.

So what, you might ask? Well, there’s a big twist… We’re using technology that’s never been seen before – a social media-controlled robot, connected to the internet and Twitter via 3G, which is able to fire tennis balls based on encoded hashtags in Tweets sent by social media users.

That’s right – social media users will actually be able to determine the trajectory of the shots, with each one mapped precisely to the positioning of the user’s choosing. All they need to do is go to tweetandshoot.wearetennis.com, and log in via Twitter, then they can drag-and-drop a tennis ball on a virtual on-screen tennis court and adjust the positioning of their shot to challenge Jo-Wilfried Tsonga, adding a personal message of encouragement to Tsonga before their Tweet is sent.

If you’re a die hard tennis fan and don’t want to leave anything to chance, I’d suggest getting involved early to be in with a chance of becoming one of our 40 ‘VIP Twitter Trainers’, who will be selected from BNP Paribas’ social communities through a competition we’ve been running on the Tweet & Shoot site.

These lucky people are guaranteed to have their balls served LIVE – and they’ll get a cool souvenir ‘Tweet & Shoot’ tennis ball to help them remember their day. But don’t worry if you miss out – it’s not just the VIP Twitter Trainers that’ll have their shots played out on 23rd May. All those who sign up on the Tweet & Shoot website will be in with a chance of having their shots selected – so keep trying!

We’ll also be building up the excitement even before before Jo-Wilfried Tsonga arrives on court. From 11am CEST on Thursday, there will be a series of mini challenges where users can test out the capabilities of the robot by trying to hit targets placed on the court, using the same encoded hashtag format that will be put into play in the training session at 5pm. It’ll give users the chance to see how this futuristic technology works as well as having a bit of fun warming up the robot before he shares the court with one of the world’s biggest tennis stars.

So that everyone can keep track of what’s going on and fully experience the event, the whole day’s action will be streamed live on on the Tweet & Shoot site.

As you can imagine, this campaign has involved the use of some really complex technology to achieve something that’s never been done before. But despite this,it is still incredibly simple for everyone to get involved, making this innovative social media activity accessible on a global scale.

So, do you fancy trying your luck against the French No1? If the answer’s yes, visit tweetandshoot.wearetennis.com and help Jo-Wilfried Tsonga triumph in the French Open!