Brands join the global, social conversation at World Cup

The Digital Essentials, Part 3

Developing a robust digital strategy is both a challenge and an opportunity. Part 3 of the Digital Essentials guide series explores five of the essential technology-driven experiences customers expect, which you may be missing or not fully utilizing.

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For those of us who are passionate about soccer, our favorite event to showcase the talent of our individual countries is about to occur.  As world events take place, companies and brands take advantage of the convergence of different countries and people coming together in one place.  Not to mention the rest of the global population watching these events on their televisions, tablets and smartphones.  Soccer’s most prestigious championship, the World Cup, occurs every 4 years bringing together the top teams in the world to battle down to the World Champion.  “The last tournament in 2010 attracted two billion TV viewers, and since then internet use has increased by 53%, Twitter use by 13,500% and Facebook has gone from 300 million to one billion users.”[1] With today’s technology, the world is able to view every game without having to physically be at the stadium which provides a perfect platform for brands to utilize multiple channels to advertise and promote their brands in unique and innovative ways.  This event will most likely be the most searched, watched and talked about sporting event of 2014!

The impact that this event will have is worldwide.  England reports that fans will spend £2.58 billion if England makes it to the final game with spending categories including sportswear, souvenirs, televisions and electronic devices, and garden/barbeque items to increase exponentially![2]  With these numbers reported only for the UK, imagine the spending opportunities in the rest of the world.  Knowing this opportunity, World Cup Sponsors and brands are ramping up their marketing and promotional brand spend for the upcoming games through the social space.
Global soccer fans will find no shortage of digital platforms in which to share, find information and chat with others surrounding the FIFA World Cup.  Social hubs like Globe Runner, SONY’s One Stadium Live and FIFA’s Global stadium are collecting data that tracks content surrounding the games including mentions of sponsors, partners, athletes, teams, as well as, providing contests and interaction with their following consumers.  Globe Runner has tracked specific keywords for both Nike and Adidas brands as well as the World Cup across all social media channels.  And their results have found that most of the conversations are happening via Twitter.  Globe Runner has found that from May 24 to 30, Adidas racked up 18k online mentions while Nike brought in 6k.  However, Adidas had around 8k mentions compared to Nike’s 4k the week prior, showing that Nike still has a chance to dominate the large FIFA sponsor Adidas in the social space.[3]
FIFA’s Globe stadium will provide a platform for real-time chats that typically occur during actual games and will give brands a HUGE opportunity to jump in those conversations the same way they do for other sporting events, yet on a much larger, global scale.  They will provide a platform for consumer interaction and contests that will allow people to vote for their favorite teams and players and win actual gear used in the World Cup matches.  The site will tie in social media channels such as Twitter and Facebook to rack up as many followers as possible.  Twitter will also play a huge role with using specific hashtags to communicate with fans in real-time during the matches.
One Stadium Live, a mobile-first website will focus on highlighting hot topics, giving fans a sense of how the global audience is feeling about the players, games, tactics and “talk” surrounding the 64 matches.  An editorial layer will also be brought into this site with a team working around the clock monitoring the best conversations and posting statistics about all of the teams and their players.
Is your brand joining in on the social conversation with this captivated audience?
 
[1] Source: http://adage.com/article/global-news/sony-creates-social-broadcast-channel-brazil-world-cup/292837/
[2] Source: http://www.expressandstar.com/business/city-news/2014/06/03/retailers-eye-world-cup-bonanza/
[3] Source: http://www.adweek.com/news/technology/nike-inches-adidas-world-cup-social-turf-158081