Golf is a sport which has embracing social media since it began rising in popularity, especially amongst the globe trotting players.  This has seen major event organisers and manufacturers follow suit as they attempt to engage with consumers in different ways and sell their wares.

We have seen before the concept of tweeting to unlock content within a website.  This is a fairly basic piece of functionality (there is even a WordPress plugin available to do it) but it is more about the content and what you, as a consumer, get at the end of it.

Callaway has launched ‘Tweet to Unleash‘ to spread the word about their latest driver.  When you go onto their site it welcomes you with a nice picture of a driver with its cover on.  To see what is underneath and start unlocking the next 7 images you have to tweet using #LongestDriverinGolf to participate.

Each tweet automatically enters you to win the driver before it arrives in 2013 (an exclusive, which many people enjoy getting access to). Those entries unlock the images and videos revealing more about this ‘advanced technology’.  But how much do people care about a new driver??

Well quite a lot to be fair.  So far there have been almost 2,500 tweets using the hashtag and almost 2,000 mentions made of the @CallawayGolf account (up from its usual 10-20).  It’s also been picked up, and probably outreached to, the likes of Golf Monthly, Bunkershot, MediaPost Communications and Yahoo Finance.  A bit of a mixed bag I’m sure you’ll agree.

Seeing as it only started getting picked up at 1pm and it is now 5.30pm, it is doing well through word of mouth and the auto-tweet from each entry.  This is where this type of campaign relies on its success.  The more people tweet the link and tag the more people see it, visit the site and enter themselves.  The viral effect.

Over the next few days, social media activity will determine when the fully-fledged image of the driver becomes available.

There are several milestones that need to be reached. At each milestone – dynamically determined by the volume of tweets that include the #LongestDriverinGolf hashtag – a section of the full image will be released.

There are eight additional milestones to be reached during the process. At each, a certain aspect of the driver’s technology will be revealed and discussed by Dr. Alan Hocknell, Callaway’s Head of Research and Development.