World Cup Social Graph (final)

Final numbers from Virilion’s World Cup Interactive Tracking Report:

World Cup Social Graph:  Facebook, Twitter and YouTube
Organization	Week 1	Week 2	Week 3	Week 4	Growth	% Change
FIFA	200,891	293,508	329,800	438,993	321,538	273.75%
England (team)	357,042	465,701	484,886	531,939	198,248	59.41%
Castrol	49,398	57,091	59,717	65,229	23,012	54.51%
Brazil (team)	81,192	94,036	101,366	114,557	38,072	49.78%
ITV	39,990	40,879	41,775	46,258	13,143	39.69%
US Soccer (team)	305,060	349,025	370,907	402,451	106,696	36.08%
Budweiser	340,866	362,669	372,827	392,348	89,961	29.75%
Coca-Cola	5,880,878	6,081,688	6,359,693	7,247,030	1,502,962	26.17%
ESPN	959,802	1,045,278	1,087,576	1,180,426	238,827	25.36%
Univision	62,506	66,410	68,368	72,171	11,429	18.82%
Emirates	51,000	51,652	52,709	56,665	7,315	14.82%
Adidas	3,206,789	3,306,774	3,342,985	3,502,415	396,748	12.77%
Hyundai-Motors	37,346	38,533	39,067	40,248	3,391	9.20%
McDonald’s	2,453,581	2,490,530	2,441,412	2,548,629	193,640	8.22%
Continental	10,702	11,181	8,335	8,506	634	8.05%
Sony	225,010	228,817	221,200	225,445	13,417	6.33%
Visa	104,383	104,869	105,196	105,414	1,490	1.43%

World Cup Corporate Winners and Losers

An interesting article on fastcompany.com yesterday reports on the World Cup’s corporate winners and losers.  Here are some of the highlights:

• Earlier we speculated that Visa might not see as much of a bump as it would have hoped because of diminishing returns post-Vancouver Olympics.  But Visa is reporting a 74% increase in card use in South Africa during the tournament. During the Olympics, Visa encourages all of its vendors to display a Visa logo, and their marketing centers around the Visa card being the only card a visitor can use during the Games. However, word from people attending the 2010 World Cup is that Visa did much less of this self-promotion in South Africa. This leads one to wonder whether the bump is the result of Visa’s sponsorship activations, or because historically low digital penetration or Visa use in South Africa made them ripe for improvement.
• The good news for FIFA is that 19.4 million Americans watched the U.S. – Ghana match. Viewership in the U.S. this World Cup cycle increased 41% over the 2006 World Cup.  No doubt FIFA executives are thrilled, as they have been trying to penetrate the U.S. market for years now.  Our own research shows that FIFA’s online community has grown 273% since the start of the World Cup. Perhaps FIFA will continue to use digital tools to capitalize off of this increased interest in the States.
• Twitter use peaked at over 3,000 tweets per SECOND during the World Cup.  This is proof positive that Twitter is a legitimate, captive audience that sponsors should be taking advantage of.

There are more statistics and a great update on the Nike-Adidas debate (which we covered here) in the article.  And of course, stay tuned for our Virilion buzz wrap up soon to come!

Study Shows 14% Average Growth in Online Communities of 2010 FIFA World Cup Stakeholders

Only a few days before the Netherlands-Spain final game, our study has shown 14% average growth to date in the online social networking communities of brands associated with the 2010 FIFA World Cup. It seems safe to assume that sponsors, media companies and teams will see positive results in growth of website rankings and social media followers regardless of their marketing expenditure.  Our prediction is that this buzz will translate into greater brand awareness, consumer engagement, and a tangible increase in return on investment.

A good example of this is Castrol.  Castrol’s online application ranking the best soccer players and teams in World Cup history has led to a nearly 36% increase in followers along the major social networking communities – even as BP, Castrol’s parent company, is having some major PR challenges completely unrelated to soccer. By providing fans with a useful digital tool, their ranking of soccer players has become a legitimate part of the overall World Cup conversation. So much so that the rankings found their way into this recent article on Goal.com. Not bad for a brand we don’t typically connect to soccer.

World Cup Social Graph (Week 3)

We’ve been tracking the number of Facebook fans, Twitter Followers and YouTube Subscribers of FIFA, the media companies covering the games, select teams  and a handful of advertisers sponsoring the 2010 World Cup. Below is a chart showing the size of their communities after 3 weeks of intense media coverage:

World Cup Social Graph:  Facebook, Twitter and YouTube
Organization	Pre World Cup	Week 1	Week 2	Week 3	Week 4	Growth	% Change (since World Cup started)
FIFA	117,455	200,891	293,508	329,800	-	212,345	149.89%
Continental	7,872	10,702	11,181	8,335	-	463	42.04%
England (team)	333,691	357,042	465,701	484,886	-	151,195	39.56%
Castrol	42,217	49,398	57,091	59,717	-	17,500	35.23%
ITV	33,115	39,990	40,879	41,775	-	8,660	23.45%
Brazil (team)	76,485	81,192	94,036	101,366	-	24,881	22.95%
Budweiser	302,387	340,866	362,669	372,827	-	70,440	19.94%
US Soccer (team)	295,755	305,060	349,025	370,907	-	75,152	18.01%
ESPN	941,599	959,802	1,045,278	1,087,576	-	145,977	11.01%
Univision	60,742	62,506	66,410	68,368	-	7,626	9.33%
Sony	212,028	225,010	228,817	221,200	-	9,172	7.92%
Adidas	3,105,667	3,206,789	3,306,774	3,342,985	-	237,318	6.48%
Coca-Cola	5,744,068	5,880,878	6,081,688	6,359,693	-	615,625	5.88%
McDonald’s	2,354,989	2,453,581	2,490,530	2,441,412	-	86,423	5.76%
Emirates	49,350	51,000	51,652	52,709	-	3,359	4.66%
Hyundai-Motors	36,857	37,346	38,533	39,067	-	2,210	4.55%
Visa	103,924	104,383	104,869	105,196	-	1,272	0.91%

Alexa Website Ranking (Week 3)

U.S. Website Ranking
Organization	Pre World Cup	After Week 1	After Week 2	After Week 3	Difference	% Change (since World Cup started)
FIFA	700	250	110	73	627	89.57%
ESPN	20	19	19	17	3	15.00%
USSoccer	4,034	3,318	2,621	2,828	1,206	29.90%
Adidas	6,606	6,181	5,366	4,739	1,867	28.26%
Coca-Cola	12,743	12,249	11,887	12,724	19	0.15%
Emirates	11,819	11,131	10,282	9,833	1,986	16.80%
Hyundai-Motors	3,384	3,598	3,602	3,688	-304	-8.98%
Sony	750	758	772	804	-54	-7.20%
Visa	2,630	3,775	3,615	3,622	-992	-37.72%
Budweiser	56,515	52,843	50,484	44,297	12,218	21.62%
Castrol	52,735	53,314	59,971	65,540	-12,805	-24.28%
McDonald’s	1,897	1,830	1,894	2,040	-143	-7.54%

Adidas Scores Own Goal (by failing to use simple but necessary digital tools)

As we commented in a post on June 23, it appears that Nike has found a way to more closely align itself with soccer, even though Adidas is traditionally a soccer powerhouse. Some of this may be attributed to Nike’s popular “Write the Future” advertising campaign, which currently has more than 17 million views on YouTube alone.

However, the problem does not lie solely with their traditional advertising. Adidas seems to have walked into the trap that snares many traditional companies—ignoring affordable Web 2.0 digital tools for brand and sports sponsorship maximization. 

In spite of their presence on Facebook, Twitter and YouTube, Adidas has focused largely on sales of World Cup-related apparel in their advertising and PR efforts. Adidas has already sold 6.5 million replica jerseys—up 25 percent from sales from the 2006 World Cup. However, these one-time sales do not necessarily translate into long-term brand loyalty from consumers. Adidas seems to forget that one of the most effective ways to capitalize on the sponsorship of a large sporting event like the World Cup is to tie the positive and highly emotional attributes of the event with your brand and show fans the parallel between what your brand stands for and the defining characteristics of the game. 

That being said, if a company like Adidas chooses to use a sponsorship solely to bolster sales, it must be aware of how consumers look to connect to products in today’s digital age. Moreover, consumers are looking for as much information as they can get about goods, and the Internet provides a simple connecting point for marketers and ready-to-purchase fans. 

To gear up for the 2010 World Cup, Adidas should have addressed the following weaknesses in its digital offense:

1. SEO fouls: A Google search for “Adidas” and “World Cup” pulls up lots of eCommerce sites. But Adidas’ website doesn’t appear above the fold (meaning, you must scroll down to find the actual site link). Not even its Star Wars Cantina ad spots show up at the top of the page—a clear sign that the ad isn’t seeing the kind of traffic that a marketer would hope for. Search engine optimization (SEO) tools should be used in all of Adidas’ online extensions to get in front of fans that are looking for information on the company and its products associated with the World Cup.
2. Website yellow card: It’s business as usual on Adidas’ main website,  where there is no front page celebration of the company’s sponsorship of the World Cup. By contrast, Nike has given its homepage a soccer theme (wisely without any mentions of FIFA World Cup).
3. Mobile miss: Simply having a website is no longer enough. As smart phones rise in popularity, people are increasingly taking in information via mobile. Mobile apps can’t just exist—they need to provide utility for the user. A low-cost, high-return option for Adidas would have been to create a mobile application to bolster their World Cup presence, including score updates and a means to purchase merchandise.

 When it comes to designing and executing a sponsorship strategy, it’s imperative that digital touch points are not missed. Paying close attention to these factors can mean the difference between a successful activation of a sponsorship and one that fails to reach its full potential.

Is sponsorship of the World Cup producing diminishing returns for Visa?

Two weeks into the FIFA World Cup, we are seeing substantial growth in all sponsors except for Visa.  We have tracked Visa’s social media sites – including its Facebook Go World site, which was created to complement its Olympic sponsorship, and Facebook Go Fans site, the comparable site for the World Cup – to see how soccer fans react to the two.  What makes them so interesting is that Visa typically sees a big bump in the use of its credit cards during the world’s ”other” big sporting event, Olympic Games.  No doubt this is why they choose to invest in the Olympics cycle after cycle – the bump is a tangible return on investment in the otherwise hard-to-calibrate industry of sports sponsorship.  Visa sponsors the World Cup in the hopes of further aligning their brand with its market leadership, global ubiquity, and excellence, and seeing a hefty financial reward during and after the tournament.

 Just prior to the start of the World Cup, “Go World” had 100,854 fans and “Go Fans” had 2,180 “likes” on Facebook.  Currently, Go World has 100,054 fans and Go Fans has 3,136.  A somewhat steady number for Go World, which is associated with the Vancouver Olympics and no longer top of mind, is to be expected.  While Go World remains steady, we would expect to see a rise in popularity of Visa’s activation around the World Cup (arguably the planet’s biggest sporting event).  But almost three weeks into the World Cup the total growth in Visa’s social media community is less than one percent, despite heavy promotion of the Go Fans Facebook match scheduler and the official Go Fans YouTube page where soccer fans all over the world can upload their best Andres Cantor impersonations.

So has Visa maxed itself out?  Perhaps the audience is already tapped into, and tapped out on, Visa’s values and how those parallel the values of winning sports teams. Visa could be trying to extend that attachment by sponsoring the World Cup, but from the mismatch in numbers of fans of both activations, it’s not clear that the plan worked.  There is no word on how much Visa invested in sponsoring and activating around the World Cup specifically, but according to their most recent 10-Q they spent about $238,000,000 on marketing and advertising in Q1.  This amount was up 22% from first quarter 2009 and is primarily attributed to activations around the Winter Olympics and the World Cup.  If Visa does not see a bump in card usage at the end of the current quarter, it might mean that Visa’s marketing dollars would have been better spent elsewhere.  Should Visa and other sponsors of multiple big sporting events spot this trend and pull back financially, sports organizations beware – we may see greater competition between sporting events for even more limited sponsorship dollars.

World Cup Social Graph (Week 2)

We’ve watched as the World Cup has impacted the digital landscape by monitoring the web- particularly the social networking platforms of FIFA, ESPN, Univision, iTV, select teams and major sponsors.

Here are a few key highlights so far…

• In the USA, Google searches for “world cup soccer” are up 500% over the last 90 days
• Blog posts mentioning soccer doubled on June 11, 2010- the day the World Cup kicked off
• Traffic spiked to 11.2 million visitors per minute on major news sites following Landon Donovan’s game winning goal in the 91^st minute of action-moving the event past the 2008 presidential election as the second highest traffic day of all-time
• Tweets containing “USA” spiked to 6% of total tweet volume after the winning goal
• Yahoo Sports was knocked offline when England played Slovenia in a suspenseful match and Twitter users were greeted by the fail whale- the  error  message that lets people know when the site is down

The chart below shows how the online communities of each have grown about halfway through the event:

World Cup Social Graph:  Facebook, Twitter and YouTube
Organization	Pre World Cup	Week 1	Week 2	Week 3	Week 4	Growth	% Change
FIFA	117,455	200,891	293,508	-	-	176,053	149.89%
Continental	7,872	10,702	11,181	-	-	3,309	42.04%
England (team)	333,691	357,042	465,701	-	-	132,010	39.56%
Castrol	42,217	49,398	57,091	-	-	14,874	35.23%
ITV	33,115	39,990	40,879	-	-	7,764	23.45%
Brazil (team)	76,485	81,192	94,036	-	-	17,551	22.95%
Budweiser	302,387	340,866	362,669	-	-	60,282	19.94%
US Soccer (team)	295,755	305,060	349,025	-	-	53,270	18.01%
ESPN	941,599	959,802	1,045,278	-	-	103,679	11.01%
Univision	60,742	62,506	66,410	-	-	5,668	9.33%
Sony	212,028	225,010	228,817	-	-	16,789	7.92%
Adidas	3,105,667	3,206,789	3,306,774	-	-	201,107	6.48%
Coca-Cola	5,744,068	5,880,878	6,081,688	-	-	337,620	5.88%
McDonald’s	2,354,989	2,453,581	2,490,530	-	-	135,541	5.76%
Emirates	49,350	51,000	51,652	-	-	2,302	4.66%
Hyundai-Motors	36,857	37,346	38,533	-	-	1,676	4.55%
Visa	103,924	104,383	104,869	-	-	945	0.91%

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Adidas vs. Nike

Sportswear brand Adidas has long been aligned with soccer and is an official sponsor of FIFA World Cup.  They have engaged in both traditional and social media to promote their association with the World Cup, and they have even acted as a sponsor for grassroots soccer events, such as the Soccer Mansion in Washington, D.C.  Since the start of the World Cup, their online community has grown and their global website rank is 3,469, an impressive improvement from its pre-World Cup rank of 3,593.  Adidas seems to be doing all the right things to activate their sponsorship and seeing the kind of bump many sports sponsors long for.

So why are they still being beaten on awareness by Nike?  According to an article in Sports City, in a recent survey more people incorrectly identified Nike as a FIFA sponsor than correctly identified Adidas.  Considering that Adidas is known as a soccer powerhouse, it appears that Nike has found a way to more closely align itself with the sport.  Nike’s Write the Future ad, which cleverly avoids FIFA World Cup branding while featuring some of the world’s most prominent players, debuted online as well as on television and was advertised on Facebook and YouTube.  The video now has over 16 million views on YouTube alone. Not bad for what many have labeled ambush marketing.  Adidas rolled out an equally hip Star Wars-inspired commercial, but it has garnered a mere 3.6 million views – paltry by comparison.  Perhaps Nike’s strong suit was its use of social media tools to advertise its advertisement – previously unheard of in the industry.  Or, is this just a case of Nike putting the resources it saved by not sponsoring the World Cup towards related marketing efforts while Adidas overpaid for the same association (for the official title of sponsor and again for its activation)?  We will continue to watch web activity for both companies as the games progress.

FIFA’s Social Networks Experience Huge Growth

Since the World Cup started on Friday, June 11, FIFA’s social networking communities have experienced huge growth.

There is one thing to point out in regards to the spike:  after we started tracking FIFA on Twitter, we discovered the organization had two huge followings there.   While 56,489 people followed the “official” account, @FIFAcom, we found an additional 103,286 people the “unofficial” account, @FIFAWorldCupTM.

Meanwhile, the official FIFA Fan Page jumped from 22,701 fans the day the event started, up to 43,952 fans one week in.  Almost 20,000 new fans in one week!

FIFA	Community Size (Facebook, Twitter and YouTube)
	Pre World Cup	117,455
	After Week 1	200,891
	Difference	83,436
	Percentage Growth	71.04%

Will FIFA’s online communities sustain the momentum?  Check back here to find out!