Time was when a trestle table would do as the means of announcing a new signing for a football club, with the new player accompanied by the team manager and maybe the chairman as well, followed by several photos around the club stadium and training ground with the traditional scarf above the head pose. This summer brought a marked change to that approach, with clubs utilising social media in new ways to announce new signings in a variety of original ways, particularly in the use of video for the announcements. Using video on social media isn’t a new thing for clubs, mostly in the form of player interviews, match highlights and behind the scenes clips, however with huge amounts being paid out for players, at the top level at least, some clubs thought out new ways to announce new signings, with some fun and notable variations in how they went about producing the videos – for example Yeovil Town used the new Snapchat feature and a FIFA game style intro https://twitter.com/ytfc/status/879352125075181568 https://twitter.com/ytfc/status/884003457077661696
Aston Villa announced the signing of John Terry with a WhatsApp group chat between chairman Dr Tony Xia, manager Steve Bruce and several players
Everton developed a style and stuck to that template for each of their summer signings, with the video announcing Wayne Rooney’s return garnering over 4 million views
AS Roma on the other hand went a bit more surreal with some of their videos
Oxford City’s announcement of Matt Paterson’s signing in a McDonalds, albeit just with a photo, ended up going viral with an endorsement by the food chain’s own Twitter account
Southampton decided to get in on the act with a video that garnered a lot of appreciation from other fans for a deliberately tongue in cheek, overblown epic effort that culminated with an anti-climatic ending
Of course with successes like those above can come the pressure for others to follow and come up with other ways of using social media for interaction with fans, leading to goal celebration gifs and pics for individual players, as well as Sky going a step further with players doing a range of poses for Sky promotions and pre-match line ups. Unfortunately for Sky, this hasn’t always turned out well, with some poses looking somewhat cringeworthy with that feeling amplified when puts not a group line up – and it does come to something when one of the players joins in with mocking the new style of line up presentation
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