Is the 2010 World Cup "The No. 1 event in all of sports"? - For Coke, Hyundai, Nike and Visa it is, according to a recent Adage article.  To be an official sponsor requires huge upfront costs and enormous advertising budgets, it costs a lot of money to reach half of the world. What may surprise some is fact that much of the marketing budget is being invested in integrated, social, local and experiential marketing programs.  An event like this requires that people engage in authentic experiences and they better be fun, sharable, social, and if they can improve the live of others, you are bound to create a movement.

I am amazed at how many tactics are "old" in terms of social engagement and many of them are expected, but what stands out is the fact that they almost all have integrated marketing elements and use digital technologies to spread online to offline and offline to online to mobile, to ebillboards and beyond. The engagement elements are usually simple and clear and allow people to be either content creators, critiques, viewers or sharers and this opens up many possibilities to engage with each other and the brands. Here is a look at some of the programs.

Coke
Powerade Global Marketing Program
 In the brand's first-ever global integrated marketing campaign, Powerade will give athletes the inspiration and ability to "Keep Playing," through a comprehensive campaign highlighted by an innovative online experience and the presence of Powerade on the pitch during the 2010 FIFA World Cup™ South Africa

2010 FIFA World Cup™ Trophy Tour
 World football's greatest prize is set to start the second leg of its biggest ever global tour with a stop in India. Having visited 50 African nations, traveling more than 72,000km, the FIFA World Cup™ Trophy Tour - Coca-Cola continues its five-continent journey to another 33 countries around the world.

Global Music Anthem
'Wavin' Flag – Coca-Cola Celebration Mix,' the uplifting soundtrack recorded by K'NAAN for Coca-Cola and its sponsorship of the 2010 FIFA World Cup™, has already broken into the top ten on music charts in eleven countries including peaking at number one in China, Mexico, Germany, Canada, Austria, Switzerland and Luxembourg. Building on the success of this music collaboration, Coca-Cola today debuted a digital radio station, "Coca-Cola Celebration Radio,"

2010 FIFA World Cup™ Longest-Ever Goal Celebration
 The Coca-Cola Company is celebrating the countdown to the 2010 FIFA World Cup South Africa™ by encouraging people around the world to take part in the longest-ever online goal celebration. The 'Longest Celebration' competition will offer fans the opportunity to win a range of prizes, including tickets to 2010 FIFA World Cup matches.

Hyundai (have to say that an all Flash site is super annoying)
Fan Fest
Inspired by previous Fan Fests staged during the 2002 and 2006 FIFA World Cups, Hyundai is expanding Fan Fest beyond the host country shores to major football capitals around the world thus further elevating the fun and Hyundai’s visibility. To be staged in the major cities of the qualifying countries, Hyundai Fan Fest will conveying thrills and excitement to fans worldwide. Cities include all nine South African Host Cities as well as Berlin, London, Mexico City, Paris, Rio de Janeiro, Rome and Sydney.

‘Fan of the Match’
One of the FIFA World Cup programs that is exclusive to Hyundai, ‘Fan of the Match’ aims to stir up fun and excitement at the match venues by rewarding the most outstanding fans.  The fan with the most colorful, zaniest costume will be presented to the crowd on the giant screen on half-time at all Hyundai 38 matches.  All 38 ‘Fan of the Match’ winners will automatically be entered into the ‘Fan of the Tournament’ contest at FIFA.com. The winner of the ‘Fan of the Tournament’ will be awarded a valuable prize.

1 Million Soccer Balls to Africa
The balls will be delivered to African children under the names of people who purchase a Hyundai vehicle or members of an official micro-website set up for this year's soccer event.
The first ball was donated by Korea's figure skating gold medalist Kim Yu-na and was delivered to UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon at an event in Johannesburg on Tuesday.

Be There with Hyundai
Create your own slogan for the national team buses. Winning supportive slogans are also branded on the team buses. A total of 55,000 slogans were received and the 32 final slogan winners were invited to watch the FIFA World Cup™. This is one of Hyundai's most effective global program

Nike
All I have to say is watch this again. Yes I know its advertising, but normal ads don’t set viral records and inspire millions of blog posts and they also allow people to “Write your own future”

Visa
Go Fans!
From June 1 through July 11, fans can visit www.youtube.com/visagofans to upload and view videos and an opportunity to enter the Visa Watch your Way to Brazil Sweepstakes each time they find a goal call video with a golden tint treatment. In addition to the grand prize trip to the 2014 FIFA World Cup, fans will have the chance to win weekly prizes including $100 Visa gift cards.
Also,
When the gates open on match day in Johannesburg, Cape Town and Durban, Visa's Go Fans experience will give fans the chance to have their face painted, be photographed in front of a Go Fans billboard of the competing countries and shout goooal for their teams as inspired by Andrés Cantor

"Citizens are connected like never before and have the skill sets and passion to solve problems affecting them locally as well as nationally. Citizens are empowered to spark the innovation that will result in an improved approach to governance." - Tim O’Reilly

Tim O’Reilly the man behind the term Web 2.0, is pushing for the Government to move beyond their current use of social media as a communication tool and for Gov 2.0 to become a "platform". He says that most people believe the term Gov 2.0 is about having a social media presence, being more transparent or making government sites more open. He acknowledges that Gov 2.0 is all of those things, but to truly become a "platform" it has to build an environment in which people can innovate on top of a foundation. The government needs to provide web services to people, not just web sites.

This approach is best exemplified by the site data.gov. Data.gov is leading the way in democratizing public sector data to drive innovation and mashup applications, some that deal with crime data, graffiti, crisis action plans and best places to find jobs. The data is available to researchers and developers to perform their own analysis and build useful applications that may not have been conceived by the governement on their own. This is a core tenet of a true platform. Allowing people access and the ability to contribute.

Watch O'Reilly at the recent Gov 2.0 Expo

Here are ten examples of Gov 2.0 related programs in action.

1. Apps for America - a developer contest for building socially repsonsible and useful applications. They judge their awards on it usefulness to constituents for watching over and communicating with their members of Congress, potential impact of ethical standards on Congress, Originality, and usability.
   
2. Apps for Democracy - The granddaddy of the Apps Contests - “Apps for Democracy produced more savings for the D.C. government than any other initiative.”  − Vivek Kundra, former CTO of Washington, DC and current Federal CIO
3. Design for America - The design community stepped up and showed amazing visual ways for us to view government and imagine new ways for government to serve citizens. The one that really took the cake was a redesign of IRS.gov.
   
4. Graffiti Tracker - provides clients with GPS-enabled digital cameras to use to photograph incidents of graffiti. Photos are uploaded to our secure, web-based system and analyzed within 24 hours of submission and alert law enforcement to potential threats. Graffiti Tracker has analyzed nearly 2 million images to date.
5. EveryBlock- filters an assortment of local news by location so you can keep track of what’s happening on your block, in your neighborhood and all over your city. - They aim to collect all of the news and civic goings-on that have happened recently in your city.
6. Manor Labs- Manor Labs is an open innovation platform designed to allow you to help us solve problems that plague our local government agency.  This is also a place for you to submit ideas on how we can do things better.
7. CrisisCommons - is a global wiki network of volunteers who use creative problem solving and open technologies to help people and communities in times and places of crisis. 
8. Community Health Data Initiative - Secretary Sebelius of HHS brings us a major new public-private effort that aims to help Americans understand health and health care performance in their communities It utilizes open data to create Applications, Interactive health maps, “Dashboards” that enable mayors and other civic leaders to track local health performance and issues, Competitions regarding how communities can innovate to improve health performance, Viral online games that help educate people about community health, Integration of community health-related data into new venues, such as real estate websites. - This probably needs it's own blog post.
   
9. Open Government Initiative - On April 7th, 2010, every Federal department published an Open Government Plan – a concrete and specific roadmaps for making operations and data more transparent, and expanding opportunities for citizen participation, collaboration and oversight.
10. Who Paid Them - WhoPaidThem peeks at our understanding of political campaign funding through a series of interactive graphics.

Ask yourself this question - If your brand was an app for social change, community improvement and good, what would it be?