Globalization, promotional culture and the production/consumption of online games: engaging Adidas's `Beat Rugby' Campaign

Issues pertaining to the production and consumption of corporate websites and online games remain relatively unexplored. This study examines the cultural production of a free, downloadable rugby game and parallel website for Adidas's sponsorship of the New Zealand All Blacks entitled `Beat Rugby'. Produced by Saatchi & Saatchi Wellington to articulate the Adidas brand as globally cool, the promotional apparatus targeted a specific niche of Adidas's company-wide target market known as the `jeeks': male, sports-loving and computer literate 12—20-year-olds. More than 43,000 participants downloaded and played in the three-month tournament with the winners, the virtual 15 All Blacks, flown to New Zealand to meet their `real' counterparts. The game and electronic community facilitated a range of consumption and communication experiences for a transnational audience of post-fans in a branded environment which was monitored by the cultural intermediaries at Saatchi & Saatchi on behalf of their client.

[1]  A. Blake,et al.  Investments in the imaginary consumber: conjectures regarding power, knowledge and advertising , 1997 .

[2]  L. McFall.  WHAT ABOUT THE OLD CULTURAL INTERMEDIARIES? AN HISTORICAL REVIEW OF ADVERTISING PRODUCERS , 2002 .

[3]  David Charles Holmes,et al.  Virtual Identity: Communities of Broadcast, Communities of Interactivity , 1997 .

[4]  J. Baudrillard.  The ecstasy of communication , 1988 .

[5]  M. Featherstone.  Consumer Culture and Postmodernism , 1991 .

[6]  M. Castells.  Die Internet-Galaxie , 2001 .

[7]  J. Williamson.  Decoding Advertisements: Ideology and Meaning in Advertising , 1978 .

[8]  Maria Bakardjieva,et al.  Virtual Togetherness: an Everyday-life Perspective , 2003 .

[9]  Manuel Castells,et al.  The Internet Galaxy: Reflections on the Internet, Business, and Society , 2001 .

[10]  M. McGuinness.  'Production of culture/cultures of production' edited by Paul du Gay [book review] , 1998 .

[11]  Richard Giulianotti,et al.  Football: A Sociology of the Global Game , 1999 .

[12]  M. Poster.  CyberDemocracy: Internet and the Public Sphere , 2013 .

[13]  Paula Saukko,et al.  Doing Research in Cultural Studies , 2003 .

[14]  Sports Advertising, Cultural Production and Corporate Nationalism at the Global-Local Nexus: Branding the New Zealand All Blacks , 2007 .

[15]  Matt Soar.  Encoding Advertisements: Ideology and Meaning in Advertising Production , 2000 .

[16]  R. Browne.  Inventing Popular Culture , 2004 .

[17]  R. A. Cropf.  The Virtual Public Sphere , 2009 .

[18]  M. Kane,et al.  Sexual Violence and the Reproduction of Male Power in the Locker Room: The “Lisa Olson Incident” , 1993 .

[19]  Sut Jhally,et al.  Social Communication in Advertising , 2018 .

[20]  S. Papson,et al.  Sign Wars: The Cluttered Landscape of Advertising , 1996 .

[21]  Anthony Y. H. Fung,et al.  Identity politics, resistance and new media technologies , 2002, New Media Soc..

[22]  A. Scott.  The cultural economy: geography and the creative field , 1999 .

[23]  L. Grossberg.  Bringing It All Back Home: Essays on Cultural Studies , 1997 .

[24]  Robert W. McChesney,et al.  Rich Media, Poor Democracy , 1999 .

[25]  M. Poster.  Postmodern Virtualities , 1995 .

[26]  D. Morley,et al.  Spaces of Identity: Global Media, Electronic Landscapes and Cultural Boundaries , 1995 .

[27]  Tim Connor.  We Are Not Machines , 2002 .

[28]  Globalization and the Decline of Social Reform , 1995 .

[29]  P. Bourdieu.  Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgement of Taste* , 2018, Food and Culture.

[30]  S. Nixon.  Re-Imagining the Ad Agency: The Cultural Connotations of Economic Forms , 2002 .

[31]  Timothy Jon Curry,et al.  Fraternal bonding in the locker room: a profeminist analysis of talk about competition and women. , 1991 .

[32]  M. Nava.  Framing advertising: cultural analysis and the incrimination of visual texts , 1997 .

[33]  Stephen R.McDaniel Christopher B.Sullivan.  Extending the Sports Experience: Mediations in Cyberspace , 2002 .

[34]  Richard Johnson,et al.  What Is Cultural Studies Anyway , 1986 .

[35]  Helen Nissenbaum,et al.  Hackers and the contested ontology of cyberspace , 2004, New Media Soc..

[36]  J. Hughson,et al.  The uses of sport : a critical study , 2005 .

[37]  Keith Negus.  THE WORK OF CULTURAL INTERMEDIARIES AND THE ENDURING DISTANCE BETWEEN PRODUCTION AND CONSUMPTION , 2002 .

[38]  Zizi Papacharissi.  The virtual sphere , 2002, New Media Soc..

[39]  Stuart Hall.  The Problem of Ideology-Marxism without Guarantees , 1986 .

[40]  J. Myles.  Community Networks and Cultural Intermediaries: The Politics of Community Net Development in Greater Manchester , 2004 .