D.C. United Embraces Bloggers

Add D.C. United to the short list of businesses that understand how to leverage Internet 2.0. United took to the Internet to generate buzz for Cosmo's Bachelor of the year candidate and United defender Bobby Boswell. Kyle Sheldon, communications coordinator for United, sent this message to many a blogger:

Hello soccer fan -

For those of you who haven’t heard, Bobby Boswell of D.C. United is one of 50 candidates for Cosmopolitan magazine’s Bachelor of the Year award. For those of you in the blogging world, it provides for a great opportunity to a) spark interest amongst your female readers, b) make fun of Bobby and c) link a couple of pretty funny videos Bob and I put together for it all. The links to the videos are below, as is the link to Bobby’s Cosmo page.

For Cosmo: http://youtube.com/watch?v=urjk5N51Yvc
Bloopers: http://youtube.com/watch?v=BqA1S85kZ_U
Also, folks should go here to vote…

-Kyle

So he loses points for "Dear soccer fan" and you can definitely tell he hasn't scrounged around for links before. Erroneous! Erroneous on both counts because United got the idea right when they went after the bloggers. They even threw in some self deprecation, which is essential to any self promotion on the Internet.

Soccer isn't all over the TV or widely mentioned on talk radio. So die-hards have sought refuge on Internet message boards such as BigSoccer. D.C. United's marketing efforts really cater to those fans. United's intelligent marketing effort is pretty good, I don't think Bobby Boswell will win Bachelor of the Year - that's for the ladies to decide.

Props to Throughball for the hot tip.