By Betty Adamou
Last week, my fiancé friend Carl had done the regular World Cup process of texting all his friends to ask them if they wanted to be involved in the World Cup sweepstakes this year. The idea is, is that you put in £10, and if your allocated team wins the World Cup, you can take all the money in the sweepstake. With 8 friends getting themselves quickly involved (some happy with the teams they were allocated, some not-so-happy) the sweepstake lottery had gone up to £80. A nice way of getting even more excited about the football.
Over the weekend, I decided I wanted to be involved in the sweepstakes too, putting in my £10 but realizing that by now, I would probably be designated a not-so-great team. I got Sweden. I don’t know a lot about football but I thought “I quite like the Swedes”. But sadly, I have to root for them to lose. If they lose, I get £20 (so at least I still have an interest in the World Cup still!)
I asked my fiancé more about the Swedish team and he told me of the legend that is Zlatan Ibrahimović (read more about him here). Within minutes I was shown his famous interview over Twitter in which people asked him questions, and he responded in funny, egotistical tweets with the #DareToZlatan hashtag. Check out this example here. (For more examples, read the Metro’s article on this Twitter interview here)
But what was it that this player, Zlatan, do that was so legendary in 2013? Why are Twitter and Nike even taking such an interest in him? The reason is because Zlatan Ibrahimović, striker for Sweden, scored a goal…by not even facing the goal, doing an overhead kick…35 yards away from the goal post. Even for someone like me who isn’t a fan of football could be intrigued by this story. I needed evidence of this goal. I watched this video to see it all:
After watching this, I instantly felt so inspired. This guy has bags of confidence and even if he didn’t make the goal, I’m sure thousands of people would have applauded his guts to even try such a move. I thought that I should Dare To Zlatan. “Today, I will Dare To Zlatan”. I fist-pumped in the air and announced to my partner that I will Dare To Zlatan so much so, that people will then Dare To Betty! Isn’t that what Zlatan would say??
So I thought about Market Research, as an industry, and what Daring To Zlatan would look like for us all. What kind of things would we do if we Dared To Zlatan? What could we achieve if we took risks, and maybe carried ourselves with a Zlatan-like swagger?
My first thoughts is that we’d probably be a lot more adventurous with the way companies/agencies within MR brand their own businesses. More interesting, daring and stimulating marketing campaigns.
How do you envisage what the Market Research industry would look like if it Dared To Zlatan? What would YOU achieve if you Dared To Zlatan? What’s the most Zlatan-like thing you can do today? Share your story!