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Nike may have scored the first goal, but the World Cup is long

June 14, 2010 By Matthew Gain 9 Comments

Source - Nielsen

According to independent studies by Nielsen and Meltwater, Nike has stolen a march on official sponsors by generating the most buzz online in the lead up to the World Cup. This fact has been lauded high and low by a range of media houses including the FT in Europe, Yahoo 7 in Australia and USA Today in the US. Yet in my opinion this research risks misrepresenting the efforts of the other players.

Few of the articles drill into the methodology employed to generate the results and the time period when the study was conducted greatly favours Nike’s World Cup campaign.

This post is not designed to prove the research wrong, but rather to put it into context and explore some of the reasons why Nike may have outperformed those further down the table.

For the purpose of this post I conducted a review of the methodology used in the research and reviewed the marketing activity of the top five ranked brands in the study to understand why Nike had won so convincingly. Note this research was not exhaustive.

I intend to post my research of the official sponsors in a series of updates this week here on my blog.

As I struggled to find much information about the Meltwater study, beyond this post, and the fact the findings were similar to the Nielsen study, for the purposes of this post I decided to focus only on the Nielsen findings.

Research findings:

Rank	Brand	Type	% Share of Official and Competitor Buzz*
1	Nike	Non-affiliated Competitor	30.2%
2	adidas	FIFA Partner	14.4%
3	Coca-Cola	FIFA Partner	11.8%
4	Sony	FIFA Partner	11.7%
5	Visa	FIFA Partner	7.3%
6	Carlsberg	Non-affiliated Competitor	3.9%
7	McDonald’s	FIFA World Cup™ Sponsor	2.8%
8	Pepsi	Non-affiliated Competitor	2.5%
9	Hyundai/Kia	FIFA Partner	2.4%
10	Panasonic	Non-affiliated Competitor	1.9%
Source: The Nielsen Company

Research Methodology:

According to Nielsen:

Nielsen’s study, conducted between May 7^th to June 6^th 2010, looked at English language World Cup-related messages on blogs, message boards, groups, video and image sites – including Flickr, YouTube, Facebook, and Twitter – that mentioned at least one of the 10 official FIFA partners and sponsors with a global footprint or two of their top competitors (30 brands in all).

Things to note about the methodology:

The problem with the methodology and the study for me is that it risks readers assuming that all brands were actively attempting to generate online buzz in the lead up to the event.

Nike’s World Cup video was launched on 17 May, meaning it benefited from 29 days of the survey period. Adidas’s Star Wars inspired World Cup video and its official World Cup video were launched on 4 June and 9 June respectively. Thus the research period accounted for only two days of the Star Wars video, whilst Adidas’s official World Cup video did not feature at all in the period.

The other thing to note is the fact that official sponsors will typically hold their big efforts until the tournament proper and an ambusher will always attempt to steal the early lead.

My view on the research:

Without a doubt Nike has done an amazing job generating buzz in the lead up to the World Cup, however as I have noted Nike was advantaged in this study by the favourable research period and the fact that the tournament hasn’t truly started.

I expect online buzz to increase as activity by official sponsors commences during the tournament. The tournament is a long way from being over, so are the opportunities for official sponsors to grow buzz and association from their sponsorships.

Irrespective you can’t argue about the success of Nike’s campaign and strategy of being involved with Football. Interestingly the success of the Nike video also highlights that plenty of people are still willing to be influenced and talk about a traditional advertising style piece of video content.

What do you think? Will the other brands build their momentum, or are their strategies and tactics missing the mark?

Come back through the week, to read my reviews of the official and unofficial brand’s activity in relation to the World Cup.

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Filed Under: Advertising/Marketing, PR, Professional Posts, Web stuff Tagged With: Adidas, Coke, Digital PR, Meltwater, Nielsen, Nike, Official Sponsors, Online Buzz, social media, Sponsors, World Cup

Competition: Announcing the winner of Problogger’s book on blogging

June 8, 2010 By Matthew Gain 14 Comments

Two weeks ago I launched a competition to give away my copy of Darren Rowse’s and Chris Garrett’s guide to pro blogging, Problogger: Secrets for blogging your way to a six figure income.

Competition:

The competition invited readers to submit in the comment box the most successful blog post they have written and explain why they thought it was so successful. If people didn’t have a blog they could simply provide a link to post the liked on someone else’s blog.

Results:

The competition generated 17 entires, from all over the world, which is more than I anticipated. The fact Darren first and then Chris tweeted the competition no doubt helped with this.

There wasn’t a strict criteria I used for choosing the winner, other than wanting to select a winner that I thought would benefit the most from the book.

It’s a shame I don’t have 17 copies of the book to giveaway, because they were all interesting posts. Though like in any competition there has to be winners.

The runners up:

The runners up, which unfortunately win nothing, are:

Meikah:

Meikah’s post on poor service at Louis Vuitton really hit a nerve of public discontent generating more than 40 comments outlining similar poor service. Makes you realise the importance of monitoring what is said about you online. I expect there are store managers that would be horrified to hear this, but then again perhaps not?

Yvonne:

Yvonne’s excellent post on 10 ways to get creative in seven days is in my opinion a near perfect blog post. In fact it was simply too good to win. The intention of this competition was to pass this book onto an up and coming blogger who I though would really benefit from the tips. Considering Yvonne employed so many of the techniques Darren and Chris recommend I don’t know that she would benefit as much as someone else. You’re just too clever already you see Yvonne.

I encourage everyone who reads this to check out Yvonne’s post and follow her advice, it is really good. I am following it myself.

Sanjeev:

Sanjeev’s post detailed a fairly lengthy overview of Windows Live Writer (disclosure I have worked at Microsoft and my employer has Microsoft as a client). Despite the post being incredibly long Sanjeev broke his post up with plenty of headlines, which made identifying the sections you wanted and those that you didn’t really easy – very important when you consider how much of the web there is to read.

Winner:

However there can only be one winner and that is Jess Morris. In the scheme of things Jess’s post on Twitter service at Australia Post isn’t technically the best written blog post entry, yet it generated 90 hits. Not a bad number of visitors for a new blogger. It has also generated comments from her audience and has been retweeted by her Twitter followers.

As all experienced bloggers I suspect would attest, it is exciting when something you write is so well received by your audience that it generates a spike in traffic, is shared via retweets and comments accrue as people join the discussion. It’s those posts that give you the blogging bug.

Jess, I hope the book will allow you to generate more successful posts like your entry to this competition and continue to evolve your blogging. Remember though, you have to pass on the book once you have read it. I look forward to following your blog.

Thanks again to all entrants.

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Filed Under: Digital PR, Professional Posts, social media Tagged With: Blog, Blog writing, Blogger, Chris Garrett, Competition, Darren Rowse, Problogger, social media, Twitter

Adidas launches Stars Wars inspired World Cup video

June 5, 2010 By Matthew Gain 1 Comment

In a follow up to the Adidas video announcing its Star Wars range Adidas has launched a World Cup video inspired by the Star Wars series. Recreating the famous Star Wars bar scene on Tatooine the video incorporates David Beckham, Noel Gallagher and Snoop Dogg among others.

An obviously expensive affair, the video leaves me a bit cold. There is no twist on the original Star Wars scene. I was waiting for something quirky or interesting to happen, but it never really came. Nowhere near the passion and excitement of the Nike World Cup video. Maybe there is more to come, but after the the first Adidas Star Wars video, which prompted me to publish a post back in January, a bit of a let down for me.

Check it out below – what do you think? At the bottom of the post is the first Adidas Star Wars video – which I thought was kick ass..