The Socceroos, the Australian national team, have shown great spirit and talent in the first two group matches of the FIFA World Cup 2014. Unfortunately, that passion and spirit did not result in any points for the Australians. Nevertheless, @Socceroos, their official Twitter account, definitely receives a bunch of virtual points from me for their fan engagement on Twitter.

Right after their second group match (lost 2-3 against the Netherlands) was over, @Socceroos tweeted, ‘Retweet if you think these men stepped up against the World #15 tonight #GoSocceroos‘. Nothing special so far. But what came next caught my attention. Just one minute after retweeting that tweet, I received a reply by @Socceroos saying, ‘@sebinomics Thanks for your support. Here’s a signed @Socceroos team photo from Mile Jedinak #GoSocceroos‘, and the photo was actually signed and personalized, with my name on it. Fabulous idea!

Obviously, the idea is not new. Some of you might remember the Old Spice campaign created in 2010 with Wieden+Kennedy, where Old Spice produced ‘videos for some of Twitter’s most followed people like Twitter founder Biz Stone, Digg founder Kevin Rose, Ellen DeGeneres, Guy Kawasaki, Perez Hilton and even Ashton Kutcher, so that when these guys saw those videos, they’d be blogging and re-tweeting like crazy; viral heaven! (Digitalbuzzblog.com 2010)’ Again, not new, but still great!

Unfortunately, I do not know how the Socceroos’ campaign can technically produce all these personalized photos in such a short time, and I could not find out who is behind it with the Socceroos. Fact is that the tweet received more than 2,000 retweets and 700 favs within two hours. This leads me to the assumption that a software was written and connected through the Twitter API to create personalized photos, which are then automatically sent out as replies to all individual users.

If anyone knows or finds out how this campaign was set up, please share it in the comment section with us. In the meantime, #GoSocceroos!