1995 Rugby World Cup final ‘live Tweet’ produces 181 million impressions #HomeGroundAdvantage
A South African Rugby Union initiative to ‘live Tweet’ a re-broadcast of the 1995 Rugby World Cup final generated phenomenal interest, according to statistics prepared for SARU.
The hashtag #19995reunited trended for almost the entire duration of Wednesday – the 20thanniversary of the 1995 victory – and continued to trend into the 25th and 26th as the conversation rolled on across Twitter.
The first live Tweet of a sporting event in South Africa – in which the performers provide the commentary – generated almost 11 000 Tweets featuring the hashtag (and many more again that didn’t) which in turn yielded more than 181 million impressions of the hashtag across Twitter.
Several of the veterans of the 1995 team were new to Twitter on the day, with handles created for legends such as Francois Pienaar (@Pienaar) Hennie le Roux (@LeRoux), Chris Rossouw (@ChrisRossouw), Brendan Venter (@BrendanVenter) and Mark Andrews (@MarkA).
Andrews soon had the hang of it:
The memories of supporters were sought, producing these responses from some of the participants
However the most re-Tweeted Tweet featuring the hashtag was fittingly from the account of the late Nelson Mandela, the South African state president of the time, who used the rugby and the victorious rugby team as a tool to foster nation building.
The live Tweet also acted as a rallying call for supporters to get behind the 2015 team’s Rugby World Cup campaign, #HomeGroundAdvantage.
Every Tweeter who used the #1995reunited hashtag received an automated message urging fans to “Get behind the Bokke” – a reference to an initiative in which fans can have their selfies embedded into the team’s playing kit with dozens of supporter images creating the pattern for the numbers on the playing jersey.
The campaign can be found at www.homegroundadvantage.co.za
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