Motorola BLUR's OCNN aka Why I Love My Job

In the week leading up to the Super Bowl, I spent a week in Miami working with one of our clients, Motorola, to activate the OCNN, or the Ocho Cinco News Network.

While generally we use this blog to talk about what we’re seeing in the world outside of Cake’s walls, the OCNN project was just too cool to not mention here.

The OCNN is the first athlete-operated social media news network powered by Motorola’s MOTOBLUR technology. For several months now, Motorola has used their partnership with the infamous Chad Ocho Cinco to create buzz around both devices and events. During the pre-Super Bowl coverage, Ocho Cinco brought on NFL stars Chris Cooley, Darnell Dockett and Ray Rice along with College Humor stars Jake and Amir to be a part of the OCNN news team.

Jake and Amir kicked off the week with a College Humor Original video about Motorola sending them to the big game and the video garnered over 150k views. The video content was a staple and continued throughout the week.

Each day, videos from the OCNN team were shared though an OCNN hub, giving fans a view behind the Super Bowl that traditional news networks couldn’t. When Ocho Cinco asked Queen Latifah a question during her press conference, they had a conversation like old friends and the typical interviewer-interviewee relationship became something else entirely. The same held true when these NFL players interviewed other NFL players: The OCNN news team had the personal connections that ESPN didn’t.

And it became a news story in itself – When our OCNN team wasn’t shooting interviews with the athletes and celebrities at the media center, ESPN and other traditional sports news outlets were stopping by to interview the OCNN team members about what they were doing.

In addition to the video content, the OCNN news team tweeted(& TwitPic’d!), blogged and Facebooked. I think it’s fair to say that they really got into it. And Motorola really got something out of it: Over 16MM impressions were generated from social media alone.

Why did it work? I think it comes down to three things:

1. Content: Social media is all about content creation. Motorola understood that and employed the OCNN news team to do just that: create interesting and relevant content.

2. Partnerships: With social media, brands’ partnerships with celebrities absolutely have to be authentic. These athletes were tweeting before Motorola stepped in, so it’s not hard to believe that they’ll continue to tweet about something they love.

3. Timeliness: Not only was all of the content produced and distributed quickly, but the updates were around the clock, providing endless ways for fans to engage.

Did you catch any of the OCNN coverage? What are your thoughts?