As part of the Ideas Will Travel project, I was allowed to spend some days with Siyakhona Africa in Alexandra, Johannesburg. Siyakhona is a joint CSR project by FIFA, Sony, and streetfootballworld to create communal education and providing media training to young South Africans from poor neighborhoods.

The Worldcup provided a perfect kickoff opportunity for the project. It offered the double support of equipment and funding from the sponsors, as well as four weeks of global interest in all things South African. When FIFA and streetfootballworld started their parallel grassroots soccer tournament in the Johannesburg township of Alexandra, during the last week of the Worldcup, the Siyakhona trainees were ready to go to work.

During that time, the team not only published stories on their blog at http://siyakhonaafrica.wordpress.com, and spread the news on Twitter. Much more importantly, the project was featured in major media hubs, including CNN. Valuable media coverage, that should help make it a worthwhile marketing investment for Sony, who provided cameras and editing equipement for the media center.

However, having overcome many obstacles to get to the program in the first place, the young trainees are already facing a new challenge: to give Siyakhona more independence from FIFA/Sony’s sponsorship. But neither the size of their audience nor its average income makes Siyakhona an ideal vehicle to create profit from advertising.

It is thus no accident, that the blogpost on the final day of the tournament not only looks back and thanks all those who made Siyakhona possible. The team also reaches out to those who might be interested in supporting the program in the future.

From a marketing standpoint, I think that Sony should support them a little while longer. They have only just begun to show what one can do with Sony’s equipment. (I hope I’ll be able to talk to Sony at some point in the next months on how they evaluate engagements like this.)

Personally, I really hope that they find support: The work they started seems very much in need in their community. Just look at one of the stories they have been covering besides the Worldcup: the rat infestation problem that’s plaguing Alexandra. Partly due to lack of sufficient municipal waste managment. But also partly due to the residents’ carelessness regarding trash.

We (meaning all of us here “up” north) tend to see mass media mainly as vehicles for advertising. But leave our over saturated mass media space, and you realize how important they can be in upholding – or creating – a sense of community and communal action.

So, dear readers, if you have an idea on how Siyakhona can open some now paths of securing funding, let me know at ideaswilltravel@gmail.com. I’ll gladly collect your ideas and will pass them on. Or contact Dannie Lurie directly via the Siyakhona blog.

La Cusinga’s Chef David has returned from a trip to Panama, and that means that dinner at La Cusinga has become even more delicious.

But that’s not the reason why David Mahler will feature more prominently on Ideas will travel next week. The true reason is that he is an important part of the lodges web presence. In his blog “Chef of the Jungle” he writes about his general philosophy of cooking, and also shares the ups and downs of a gringo’s life in Costa Rica.

Maybe less literary, but more frequent are his activities on Facebook, where he posts this evening’s dish and a photo of the sunset taken from La Cusinga. In case you want to take a look at his Facebook page: there is more than one David Mahler, but only one lists La Cusinga as an employer.

Sharing pictures of food is always a nice idea, and just to make everyone just a little bit jealous, here is a picture of Thursday’s dinner. It’s roasted yellowfin tuna with pineapple salsa puree of camote (local white yam) and (if I remember correctly what he said) chayote or perulero squash. Because you won’t find any soda-cans or platic bottles at La Cusinga, each dinner is accompanied by either fresh water or some homemade fruit juice. In this case: carambole/starfruit.

As we’re talking eco-tourism, David’s dishes are also all-organic, and as local as can be. If you’re interested in the details, hang on. I’ll be joining David next week for some food shopping.

Until then, you’ll find me on La Cusinga’s community deck, counting the hours ’til dinner time.

PS: If there are enough requests, I will try and talk him into sharing some recipes.

And just so you’re not shocked, that trend/search will have a promoted tweet on top, too. For example, this one:

“You’ve waited 11 years to see Woody and Buzz again. Toy Story 3 – Share the experience with friends! www.disneyticketstogeter.com”

After coping with being slightly underwhelmed, here is what we can learn from this:

1. A Promoted Trend/Tweet isn’t quite the regular tweet that Biz Stone talked about.

Contrary to Biz Stone’s initial insistence, that their advertising offers would amplify valuable content by fellow twitterers, the Sponsored Trend has turned out to be a classical corporate marketing tool.

“Since all Promoted Tweets are organic Tweets, there is not a single “ad” in our Promoted Tweets platform that isn’t already an organic part of Twitter.” Twitter Blog

Yeah… that’s, like, totally organic if you are a very big company with a marketing department lots of followers.

2. Twitter is for old people,too.

If have the patience (and a life eventless enough) to wait 11 years for a sequel, you’re obviously well past puberty or youth. But of course, that was not the only promoted Toy Story tweet. Disney/Pixar must have actually promoted many different tweets for different audiences. Which eventually self-filtered and travelled to their relevant target groups.

Here is another Toy Story Promoted Tweet, found on Piers Fawkes’ PSFK.

3. Twitter understands reading behaviour and layout.

A promoted tweet looks indeed like a regular tweet, and is placed at the top. Twitter is obviously aware that our search result reading habits are incredibly impatient. We rarely go beyond the fifth result. The “Promoted Trend” however, goes to the bottom of the listed trends, but with a yellow highlight. It draws your eyes down to the end of the list, while seemingly being decent enough to not insinuate itself at the top.

4. DisneyPixar is serious about social business.

The URL in the Tweet, www.disneyticketstogether.com, does not take you to a microsite. It takes you to a facebook app, which allows you both to buy tickets and to connect with other Disney/Pixar fans. Well done, Mouseketeers, this does seem to make a lot of sense.

At the same time, it feels almost counterintuitive these days. So much news is centered around extending the reach of its Facebook’s social power beyond the facebook site. Levis’ social shopping site being a nice example. However, Disney is moving e-business inside the facebook “walls”.

Either way, it’s an app that helps Facebook reach a new level. The New York Times has a nice article and quote on why Facebook loves this move just as much as Disney/Pixar:

“What Disney is doing moves beyond just creating awareness to using the platform to acquire customers directly,” Mr. Rose said. “This is the first time that a movie studio has tried this, which we think makes a lot of sense because moviegoing is one of those activities that is inherently social.” Dan Rose, Facebook VP Platform Marketing (NYT)

We agree. And thus, weirdly, a boring link at the bottom of the first Twitter-Ad proves to be more “social”, than the new advertising technology introduced by the social-message giant. That said, we still like the Twitter approach to advertising. I am curious how smaller advertisers can use it to their advantage, but it seems less invasive and less insulting than anything Facebook is trying these days.

While quite charming to watch, it also shows that live coverage might be a field of communication where Twitter gives us very little additional value: It’s basically the referees’s game report, pretyped by the multitude. No new insights seem to be trending here.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/football/world-cup-match-replay

This seems intuitive. The game is faster than its trends. Or, to be more precise… a goal is not trending. It’s happening.

But of course, the poverty of visible twittered insight is further amplified by the concept behind the Guardian’s visualization. As an aggregation tool, it necessarily bulldozes over the details. And that’s of course where Twitter shines. So if there was – let’s say – a really interesting discussion regarding Jogi Löw’s new Strenesse sweater, the Guardian’s animation would surely miss it.

http://search.twitter.com/search?q=jogi+pulli

Nevertheless. Thank you Guardian, for this beautiful tool to pry open the cranium of the social web.

What they would have found is a FIFA supported effort to establish a combination of football and education facilities in communities that are usually too poor to afford either.

I had the chance to talk to Mike Geddes, the Football for Hope project manager who is working for streetfootballworld, the NGO that FIFA has teamed up with to organize Football for Hope. What I find rather interesting, is that FIFA made all the major sponsors participate in Corporate Social Responsibility projects, without prescribing what each and everyone could do. The Siyakhona project that I visited, is part of Sony’s commitment.

Most of the interview is about the steps involved in finding the right sponsor for something like Siyakhona. But of course, I also had to aske Mike about the option of using Corporate Social Responsibility campaigns to create advertising. :-)

BTW: Here is FIFA’s official page. (Who designed this?)

http://www.fifa.com/aboutfifa/worldwideprograms/footballforhope/index.html

That’s why Naked London hired Creative Director Jim Thornton, who did some pretty nifty and original work at Mother and Leo Burnett, to set up an edgy little creative department. And that’s why I talked to Designer Lorenzo Frutta to see why a young creative would go to Naked, a place that’s first and foremost known for strategy.

Thanks, Nike.

(There you go, Jim. Didn’t take 15 mins. for Nike to prove you right. :-)