Technology giant Cisco leveraged its tie-up with Premier League Champions Manchester City FC and City Football Group in July to launch ‘The Connected Scarf’: a wearable piece of supporter technology which helps monitor a fan’s emotional journey throughout a match and thus provides deep insights into the interconnection between the club and its supporters.
Cisco, the official technology partner for five City Football Group (CFG) clubs – Manchester City, New York City FC, Melbourne City FC, Yokohama F Marinos and Sichuan Jiuniu FC (and the Manchester and Melbourne women’s teams) – embedded an EmotiBit bio sensor discreetly on the scarf neck to capture the body’s bio-signals throughout a match.
The scarf records a range of physiological measures – including heart rate, body temperature, respiration, oxygen saturation and hydration, plus sympathetic nervous system responses that are driven by cognitive and emotional arousal – providing concrete information to analyse how fans are feeling at different moments in the match which will be used to help shape more curated and customised supporter experiences.
The scarf, which moved from idea to reality over a period of four months, is fitted with an open-source device containing biometric sensors integrated into the fabric which anonymously capture bio-signals coming from a series of skin conductance sensors and which also tracks activities, movements, gestures, rotations and direction.
The development team invited six City fans to participate in a pilot program to test out the new scarf which captures more than 120 moments during a 90-minute match, we saw how true passion manifests itself across moments of joy, nervousness, tension, excitement and much more.
Next season, Cisco will make The Connected Scarf available to fans in Manchester and around the world.
The high-tech scarf was launched through an integrated campaign spanning digital, social and PR developed with global sports and entertainment creative agency Octagon and global production and technology partner Unit9.
When we are connected, anything is possible.
Cisco and @ManCity break new ground with the launch of the Connected Scarf. Learn more
— Cisco UK & Ireland (@CiscoUKI) July 27, 2022
Matchday can be a of emotions for #ManCity fans!
The @Cisco Connected Scarf plans on capturing them all to bring fans closer to the game than ever before
Find out more
— Manchester City (@ManCity) July 27, 2022
“In our work with Manchester City over the past few years, we’ve continuously looked for ways to connect fans to the sport they love, on another level,” outlined Cisco Global Sports Marketing Manager Ashley Marusak. “The Connected Scarf is such an exciting project for us to pilot together, as we seek to better understand and measure the ups and downs of football fandom and how the game impacts supporters not only emotionally, but physically as well.”
“At Manchester City, we continue to explore the latest technologies to deliver high quality fan experiences and bring them closer to the club,” commented City Football Group Chief Marketing & Fan Experience Officer Nuria Tarré. “A scarf is an iconic item that football fans across the globe own and wear to show their passion and support and this latest activity with Cisco is an innovative, new way to bring fans together and connect with them in a new and exciting way.”
Octagon UK Creative Director Ryan Shaw added: “Being a fan of any club is an emotional rollercoaster. Thanks to the Connected Scarf we’re now able to understand the physiological emotions fans go through during a game. Creating this technology from scratch has been an incredible journey, there’s so much this scarf can teach us about fans and club culture, watch this space.”
Comment
For 100-plus years, the scarf has been the key symbol of football fandom. Although, arguably this has been supplanted in recent years by the shirt. For a century soccer scarves have been part of the highs and the lows of the game: from capturing the blood, sweat and tears of fans, to being held horizontally aloft or twirled above the head in support of a team. This kind of activation brings it into the modern era of support.
The complex physiology and psychology of passionate fandom has always been something of a mystery. But this new Cisco and City initiative sets out to record, measure and share the ups and downs of football support and enable the brand and the club to gain a deeper understanding of fan emotion.
There are echoes here of previous scarf-based soccer sponsor activations such as DEVK’s FC Koln ‘Selfie Scarf’.
Leave a comment
You must be logged in to post a comment.