Emirates Team New Zealand update - the team goes social

Emirates Team New Zealand joins the social media age with the launch today of its new blog .... www.etnzblog.com. The team has worked on the project with Dell Computers and Dallas, Texas, based RD2 Inc, an acknowledged international leader in social media development.

Chris Ronan, president of RD2, said: “Working with Grant Dalton and the team with its invigorating spirit of adventure is a remarkable experience. We were intrigued that a little country in the South Pacific has a proud history of domination on the water.

“Emirates Team New Zealand has always been at the cutting edge on the water; we welcomed the opportunity to put the team on the cutting edge of social media.”

RD2 has an impressive client list including Southwest Airlines, international real estate company CB Richard Ellis, Dell Computers, and Wide Open West a US cable tv, internet and telephone company. The Southwest blog has been rated best corporate blog for four straight years.

He said: “Like Southwest and Dell, Emirates Team New Zealand is using best practices to leverage key social media tools, from the blog, to Facebook, Twitter and YouTube.

“Furthermore, RD2 is working with Emirates Team New Zealand to create a social media presence that is as visually stunning online as the team is on the water.

“It’s important to build an online community that lives up to the brand expectations the team has created. That’s a tall order.”

Emirates Team New Zealand managing director Grant Dalton says the headlong leap into social media would have been impossible without Dell and RD2.

“We had made tentative steps into social media over the past two years with Facebook and Twitter. We knew we needed a first-rate blog and we knew we needed to integrate Face book, Twitter and YouTube into that blog. We wanted to be right in the forefront with our adoption of social media and we have an expatriate Kiwi Andy Lark, who was then working for Dell, to thank for much of what we have today.

“Andy is an articulate advocate of harnessing the power of social media; he got RD2 involved in the design and implementation and Dell provided the platform, funding and support.”