Category Archives: Soccer World Cup

06.23.14
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World Cup Facebook Stats update

SocceroosWow, what an awesome start to the World Cup! The Brazilian way of playing football must be rubbing off on teams as we’ve seen some high score lines.  I think we’ve already had more goals than the last World Cup. Australia’s Socceroos have performed gallantly and hopefully will finish off with a strong showing against Spain later tonight.

I’ve been curious to see what’s been happening off the pitch on Facebook. Looking at a bunch of countries Facebook pages I’ve done a quick breakdown.

Top Fan growth

Mexico’s Facebook page has had the biggest fan growth in the last 3 weeks adding 600,000 new fans, followed by Italy with 370,000, England with 350,000 and US 141,000 fans.  The Socceroos have added 42,000 new fans.
fan growth

fan growth chart

Engagement rate

All the action on Facebook has occurred in the last week. Mexico’s page from a pure numbers perspective is most active with 1.3 million people engaged (19.3%) on the account. Italy is a close second with 1.2 million (50.6% engagement) of its fans active on their page.

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In my next blog post I will analyse which Facebook posts have resonated most with fans.

Data provided by Social Pulse

 

 

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06.11.14
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Brazil 2014 World Cup TV Commercials

In just over 24 hours time we’ll be glued to our television sets for a month of football action from the FIFA World Cup. The global TV audience for the World Cup is estimated at 4 billion viewers, making it more popular than the summer Olympics. FIFA will make $4 billion AUD from this tournament with the bulk of money coming from advertisers.

For advertisers the World Cup is a big opportunity to create buzz and excitement in their products. Adidas has paid $215 million to be a partner for the last 4 years in the lead up to the World Cup. Visa, McDonalds, Coke, Emirates, Bud, Hyundai and Sony have all paid large sums of money to be involved in the event.

In my last blog post I touched on the fact that I hadn’t seen many ads. As expected this has changed the closer we get to the event. Present and past football stars dominate the commercials with many of them being brand ambassadors.

What TV commercials will we be watching this year?

SBS’s The World Game has posted a lot of the World Cup commercials on their website. See below for my top 5 commercials. Some of the ads released are quite long so am expecting shorter versions to appear on TV. What’s your favourite ad?

    1. Adidas –  Becks, Zidane, Bale and Lucas Moura bring new meaning to indoor soccer 
    2. Kia – Adriana Lima Transforms a Man Cave. A great way to convert non football fans. 
    3. Beats By Dre – Staring Neymar the ad feels more like a mini movie with an awesome soundtrack. 
    4. Nike Football – one for the Football purists 
    5. World Cup on Twitter – Will Twitter dominate the social media landscape at this World Cup? 
05.18.14
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Are you excited about the Soccer World Cup?

soccerWith less than a month to go has the Soccer World Cup grabbed your attention? If you’re living in Australia than the answer is probably a no!

We’re coming into our winter months where the local Footy (Aussie rules) and Rugby competitions dominate our media airways and attention.

I’ve been really surprised with the build-up to this Soccer World Cup. Granted we’ve got a month to go and fewer superstars in our national team, but I would’ve expected more buzz. To date, I’ve only seen one TV commercial by the official partner Hyundai promoting the World Cup and no Social Media campaigns or competitions.

Similar to Super Bowl ads in America, Soccer World Cup TV commercials by the main sporting brands are eagerly anticipated. Nike and Adidas have released YouTube ads showcasing the soccer stars of the upcoming event. We haven’t seen them here, but shortened versions of the ads may have been shown on TV in overseas markets.

Being a football (soccer) fan, I’ve been following the Socceroos every move, our 30 man squad was named last week. Australia is in one of the groups of ‘death’, with games against Spain, Netherlands and Chile. We’ll be happy with a draw!

FIFA strictly controls the marketing of the event. Unless you’ve paid millions of dollars to FIFA to be an official sponsor you cannot reference ‘Soccer World Cup’ in your advertising activity. There’s actually over 10 variations of the words ‘World Cup’ you cannot use in your advertising, including logos, click here for the brand guidelines and go to page 8 for the restrictions. The advertising restrictions are similar to the Olympics.

Looking at FIFA’s World Cup website and Google’s Play store it is hard to work out if there’s an official App for the tournament. There’s the standard FIFA App, but you think they would make one for the tournament. If there is one, they’re not making it easy to find. There’s no shortage of unofficial World Cup Apps.

The Technical Lead at work has been playing with Adidas’ FIFA World Cup App, which adds wallpapers of the soccer fields and gives score updates. I get the feeling the developers had a field day with the features in this App. There doesn’t seem to be any other World Cup Apps by the other major sponsors.

Expect marketing activity from Qantas, Coke, McDonalds and other brands to kick-off shortly. With the other footy codes controlling the purse strings it’s hard to see the Soccer World Cup dominating the back pages of the papers until the event starts. History shows us the country unites behind the Socceroos (Aussies) and the ‘world game’ once the tournament begins. Bring on the Soccer World Cup!