We’ve seen a number of clubs and brand’s test out Twitter’s short-form video capture/sharing tool Vine over the past few months.  Some have used it to reveal players they have signed and others to capture moments during a game that can quickly be shared.

Now adidas Tennis, who I used to work with during my time at We Are Social, have been looking at ways in which to tease out their new campaign.  The basis from it was a video that gives an insight into the training regime of World number 1, Novak Djokovic, with ‘Performance meets Personality‘.

Twitter recently published the results of an experiment they worked on the MLB over in the States.  It was based around live-tweeting but gave an interesting insight into the sharability of Vine videos compared to other types of content.  It revealed that across all other measures of engagement, Vine videos dramatically increased the ways that followers interacted with a team. The overall impact was that Vines got:

• 2.3x more retweets than average
• 1.7x more follower growth
• 1.8x more mentions
• 2.1x more favorites

People tweeted more often when the teams posted Vine videos than when they used any of the other live-tweeting strategies — a nearly 5% increase compared to the control sample.

For a brand, the platform represents a different way in which to take snippets of content ahead of a bigger launch.  Could this have the same traction and create the same effect as when it’s used for live-tweeting?  It was tested out with 3 Vines ahead of the video reveal and collectively they gained over 1,000 RT’s and almost the same in favourites – not bad for an account of 40k followers.

Nole is a funny guy who likes to spend time with his family… #NovakNole https://t.co/71d18AO6x6

— adidas tennis (@adidastennis) September 30, 2013

Novak is intense. Novak is driven. Novak never gives up on a point. #NovakNole #NoleFam https://t.co/FW5DSsYIcH

— adidas tennis (@adidastennis) October 1, 2013

Novak and Nole. The two sides of a personality. The world's number one tennis player. #NovakNole #NoleFam https://t.co/SXTbVgVLVl

— adidas tennis (@adidastennis) October 2, 2013

The video itself has received around 35k views which, for a video from one of the worlds biggest sports brands and featuring a player with a massive personality and almost as big social media presence (2.3m on Twitter), is a little smaller than am sure was hoped.  It shows that people when it comes to sharing and consuming short form content are a lot happier to do it than in full on an external site such as YouTube.

It also shows the power of engaging with the sports player and involving them in the promotion.  When they have such power on social networks (and in the media generally) then they can push a campaign far more than the brand can on its own.  It’s an interesting campaign by adidas Tennis and their Vine video’s look much better (more professional) then most we have seen.  Am sure we’ll see more from adidas and other brands as the testing and app updates take place over the coming months.

It takes a lot of mental strength to win epic battles in big tournaments.Check out how I do it here: http://t.co/830jbFFfL0 #novaknole

— Novak Djokovic (@DjokerNole) October 2, 2013