How to be the most talked about brand during the 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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Adidas, one of the World Cup tournaments largest sponsors (and has sponsored the World Cup “official” soccer ball since 1970, has spent a lot of time and investment the past year for this campaign.  Along with sponsoring the tournament, Adidas has crafted a campaign to help build the payers and national soccer federations that they sponsor as well as representing 9 or 42 national teams competing in the 2014 World Cup.  Adidas has prepped for months in order to create a real-time marketing campaign that is sustainable on a global scale.
Establishing a real-time HQ marketing hub in Rio, Adidas has established a pretty large presence with a three-story retail space, tech hub, media center and rooftop VIP space.  The brand has been able to track each match in real-time as well track the most searched players among the top 100 in the world and Adidas sponsored players.  Our nation’s Independence Day marked the 23^rd consecutive day of Adidas’ social effort to push content across retail channels aligning with the World Cup matches.
What people don’t know is the time, effort and investment Adidas as made to make this campaign effective and successful.  For the past year, agency representatives have been traveling across the world collecting information, images and content on Adidas sponsored players.  This information would be utilized to create content no matter the outcome of the matches – either way, Adidas could produce real-time information on any player regardless of who wins!  What has been the cherry on top for Adidas is seeing stars emerge from their own sponsored teams (ie. Columbia who went further than they ever have before in a World Cup tournament).
The campaign has given Adidas the ability to take content and images, tweet them live during the game, prepare them for outdoor projections around the world for winning nations to then live on digital sites/screens in subways, retail stores, etc. in the days/weeks to follow.  Paring a ton of footage with content collected over the past year, Adidas has been primed for creating messaging in reaction to real-time game play.  Telling the right stories at the right time has a lot of impact for the brand, increasing the amount of social interaction around those stories and the brand.  Anticipated planning and flexibility have been the main key points for the success of this campaign – being ready for moments and capitalizing on them.
So far, Adidas has seemed to reach their ultimate goal – Twitter stats report 1.6 million tweets, retweets and replies mentioning the brand, their YouTube’s audience has doubled with 200k new subscribers, and Adidas has added over 1 million fans to Facebook as of July 4^th.  It will be interesting to see what that increase is by the end of the tournament this weekend and how their competitors have fared in comparison.  And what is even more exciting is what these campaigns going to look like in the future with faster action and even better technology.  How will brands rise to those challenges and blow their current campaigns out of the water?  It will certainly be thrilling to watch!