Arsenal embrace the bizarre during Twitter takeover
As well as having one of the best websites in the Premier League, Arsenal showed their approach to social media is just as revolutionary this morning during their latest Twitter takeover when fans can ask questions of random first team players. Taking part today were Kieron Gibbs, Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain, Lukasz Fabianski and Per Mertesacker, and the players were predictably bombarded with the usual questions which greet online Q&As.
What makes Arsenal’s approach different is that there seemed to be nothing off topic. As long as you followed the club on Twitter and posted a question, there seemed to be a chance it’d get answered. While Gibbs’ questions were less exciting (“Batman or Superman?” being one), when Oxlade-Chamberlain stepped up things got a bit more exciting.
Granted there’s nothing controversial here, but it’s refreshing to see a club allow players to answer questions such as “Do you sing in the toilet?”. It was also a great way of showing the player’s personality and providing a true piece of fan engagement. Fabianski and Mertesacker also provided a few memorable moments, with the goalkeeper answering questions like “What is the most important part of a sandwich?” and Mertesacker revealing that no-one owes him too much money:
Per says: "That's hard to say! I'm really strict and I catch people out straight away, and annoy them to get the money in" #AskPer
— Arsenal FC (@Arsenal) January 20, 2014
We’d definitely put this down as a success, as Twitter takeovers by players can often be very dull affairs as answers are strictly reserved for questions which aren’t too controversial and toe the party line. While there weren’t many Arsenal-related questions being answered, fans got an insight into the personalities of each of the players and some of the more humorous answers racked up an impressive amount of retweets. Arsenal – and the players involved – deserve a bit of credit for giving us a great example of how an online takeover can be done successfully. The individual hashtags for each player all ended up trending worldwide too, giving the club some brilliant exposure.
