Reimagining Roma's Digital Empire

The world of digital technology and communications is fast-paced and ever-changing. Leading the charge is Omnigon, the multinational digital consultancy with office in London and New York. Their latest project sees them re-imagine what's possible with a soccer club website.

Rome is a dramatic place of beauty, passion and history almost unrivaled and under the vision of President Jim Pallotta, Italian club, AS Roma is looking to an equally enthralling future.

The Serie A club have made great strides recently both on and off the field. Sitting comfortably in the league and securing qualification to the last 16 of the Champions League, Roma have a lot to look forward to as negotiations over a new stadium, the Stadio della Roma, draw closer to completion.

And this overhaul of the club doesn't end there. The re-imagination of the club's website is another step in an overall strategy that is setting AS Roma apart from its rivals, not just in Italy, but across the whole of the sports world. Working closely with Omnigon, the multinational digital consultancy with headquarters in New York and office in London, LA, Toronto, Kiev and St. Petersburg, AS Roma, under the guidance of Head of Digital, Paul Rogers have rethought and pushed the boundaries of what's possible with a club website.

"Jim Pallotta has a grand vision for AS Roma. He's very media savvy and very technology driven. His vision is to look at things differently and not just do what every other football team does when it comes to social media or what they do on an official club website," explained Paul. "I'm quite experimental, I quite like doing things that are different and for a club in Roma's position, there was no thinking we would be a 'me too' club - doing what every other club does. What clubs do for an official website doesn't really cut it anymore. The fans prove that by choosing to use social media more than they do an official club website.

"One of the things we were looking for when we sought a partner to work with was also someone who didn't offer a template based site and didn't just look at what a different sports league or sports organization was offering. Everyone does the same and Omnigon was a great fit because they sat outside of that. They look at things differently and we went there with a vision and they helped us realise that."

From this starting position, Paul set about an extensive research project which included the use of Reddit, the social media platform to gauge opinion and crowdsource ideas for the new website.

"The decision to use Reddit was unique, Reddit is seen as a place where brands don't go," added Paul. "There's no filter on there so they'll be ultra critical and I thought that's the place we should go. We weren't looking for people to just say to us our ideas were brilliant. It was about going to potentially the most uncompromising and hostile environment and facing it head on. We wanted to ask the supporters what they wanted, what works, and what doesn't work, what they think will work and then match all that up with the ideas we had." From this feedback Paul and AS Roma worked closely with Omnigon as they set about creating a website that defied convention; broke the rules and ultimately - fan-centric.

"This was a start from scratch endeavour," said Igor Ulis, founding member and CEO of Omnigon who lead the project. "Their vision for the site from day one was that they didn't want it to be like a traditional club site, they wanted it to really engage the fans beyond just their interest in sport - they also wanted it to have a connection to Rome as a geographic location."

The challenge for Omnigon was to combine all the required elements into a site that created the ultimate immersive experience, something that sounds so much easier than done as Igor detailed. "It's not just one thing, it's actually a number of that things that need to come together in order to qualify as an immersive experience," he said. "It's a combination of the content strategy and device strategy - it's also about understanding what type of fan you're engaging with and the particular digital properties. We had to go through a number of exercises to conduct research both externally with the club's fan base as well as internally amongst the various stakeholders. All these people have a voice in what the website and mobile app will represent and we had to bring all of that together to formulate the picture that ultimately resulted in the launch of the new site."

The launch of the site in December 2015 was a culmination of nearly 12 months of hard work and research that draws inspiration from social media sites which has resulted in a clean, easy to navigate and unique website. "We looked at a number of different options in respect to the creative layout within other industry sites and we actually looked more at social media site than we did at traditional media publishing sites," said Igor. "We felt that a social media website experience will prompt the user base to behave like they would on a social media site. They would be more likely to share this content, understand this content and engage with it like they would on a social media site and so we wanted to evoke that type of behavior with the design."

This is something that resonated with Paul. "A lot of club websites are from a bygone era, before the likes of Snapchat and Instagram and before all these social networks really took off," he added. "We've got a football club website but I wouldn't exactly say its football specific. We're a football club with an entertainment brand. If you go on our website you'll find out about places to eat in Rome, places to drink. People talking about music, style and shopping as well as football.

"Our fans have interests seven days a week. Yes football keeps them altogether, that's why they're on the AS Roma website, but they’d also have other passions like food and drink and fashion, particularly in a city like Rome."

The development of the site is far from over as Paul was also keen to stress, "The process of getting feedback doesn't start and end within the build of the site; it's got to keep going on," he said. "We're constantly refining what we do based on what people are saying and how people are using it."

So the launch of the new website is far from the end of the project, rather just the beginning in what will be a beautiful partnerhip for both Omnigon and AS Roma.