by Mattr Marketing | May 29, 2014
World Cup 2014 is being touted as the ‘Social Media World Cup’. After the huge surge in social media activity during 2010 games, that’s no surprise. With so many people actively engaging with the World Cup on social, it makes sense for sponsors and Marketing Ambushers to use social data as an additional market insights resource to help plan or optimize their campaigns.
That being said- which sponsor or brand is currently reaching the right soccer audience based on last week’s @FIFAWorldCup Twitter engagement?
At Mattr, we’re analyzing these brands every week! By taking a sample of @FIFAWorldCup engagers, analyzing their personality characteristics and demographics, and then comparing those Personas to World Cup sponsors and Marketers, we can show who might be resonating best with the soccer audience.
Week Highlights: The Cleat Brands Are Kicking Butt
Both World Cup sponsor Adidas and Ambush Marketer Nike are pulling social engagement from the same ‘Rugged Male’ group that is making waves with @FIFAWorldCup on Twitter (we like to call them MEP’s, meaning ‘Most Engaged Personas’). It appears that Adidas’ decision to change their 2010 Marketing tone, from complex to ‘simple and exciting’, is faring well, since Rugged types prefer less emotion and more straightforward communication.
The true test for both brands will occur during the games, when Marketing teams should be standing by, ready to optimize their campaigns in exciting ways, based on who’s engaging with the World Cup and with their own brands on social. Adidas seems ahead of the social media game at this point- but time will tell who becomes more relevant.
Of Interest: Will Puma Attack?
Puma claims to be saving their new ad campaign for ‘Back to School’ after the World Cup games have ended, due to the crowded nature and deep pockets of World Cup Marketers. If they’re strategic, though, they could still make a play in the social media or online world and get some great exposure. Stay tuned!
by Mattr Marketing | May 15, 2014
(Originally posted in The Agency Post)
Nothing beats Twitter as the ultimate second-screen tool. Even Nielsen can’t track viewer emotions in real time as thoroughly as Twitter, where context curation using hashtags is making it easier to target the right audience at the exact moment they’re interested in the topic.
But engaging viewers on their second screen can seemed forced if you don’t choose the right hashtags or the right programming. If you’re looking to jump on the second-screen bandwagon, here are some tips to get you started.
1. Locate Hashtags in Popular Media
“Good Morning America” is one of many TV shows almost constantly displaying a hashtag during its broadcast (usually #GMA).
When Ford CEO Alan Mulally presented the 2015 Mustang design on the show, both companies were able to immediately gauge the reaction among brand fans. Launching a redesign of an iconic car on a morning show is expensive, but it’s a safe bet that paid off for Ford, with the unveiling of the new Mustang outshining “The Amazing Spider-Man 2” on that day’s broadcast.
Depending on your brand, sometimes it’s worth the flash and expense of a Times Square unveiling to grab the attention of an audience that’s already primed to engage.
2. Determine the Right Partner
“Good Morning America” was a good choice for Ford, but finding the right TV programs or sporting events to partner with depends on a variety of factors. Your agency should have a database of available partners, and your budget, along with your ability to sift through social data, will drive how much you can spend on advertising.
If you’re pinching pennies, there are ways to see great success with less-than-primetime placement. Esurance had a big hit after the Big Game with its #EsuranceSave30 commercial featuring John Krasinski.
In the spot, Krasinski lets on that Esurance saved $1.5 million by airing its commercial after the game and launched a contest that spawned over 5.4 million uses of the hashtag (200,000 of which happened within the first minute of the commercial airing).
3. Target the Right Audience
As you choose your media, ask yourself whether you are nurturing brand fans or attracting a growing segment of personas distinct from your most vocal advocates. You can really screw this up if you disenchant your fans while trying to reach growing segments.
Both Ford and Esurance went after their brand fans, but if Esurance had wanted to target an ad at the growing segment of progressive buyers, it could have run an ad on “The Colbert Report” to charm that segment without disenchanting older, more conservative buyers who wouldn’t be watching that show.
4. Coordinate Your Hashtags
As long as you’re fine with the campaign hashtag audience seeing the tweets from that show, ask the media producers to use your campaign hashtag along with their live show tag. This can add multiple points to your engagement statistics, but you’d be surprised at how often marketers skip this simple step. Remember that this is new to most agencies and brands, so walk through the strategy together and over-communicate to make sure it’s executed effectively.
5. Use Data to Sell the Client
It’s important to show the client that you have enough data to back up your hunches. For example, Progressive may want to run a campaign to plant some seeds for younger consumers. The most popular show for its overall audience is “Conan O’Brien,” but “The Daily Show” is uniquely popular for Progressive.
“The Daily Show” is uniquely popular for Progressive consumers.
Think of this as an “undiluted” market, heavily concentrated with people who have engaged with Progressive. Sure, Conan is hugely popular with Progressive fans, but Conan is popular with almost every brand’s fans. Therefore, Progressive can make a much more informed decision on cost benefit by comparing the data on two possible partners.
6. Be Prepared to Call an Audible
If you’ve meticulously prepared your tweets with your media partner, but some tragic news interrupts your launch, do the right thing for your brand. The legendary example is Oreo’s “You can still dunk in the dark” tweet, which was posted when the lights went out during the 2013 Super Bowl.
While that tweet and its subsequent campaign won a ton of acclaim from the advertising world, it was a milquetoast message — extremely innocuous and, in my opinion, not great content for the brand. Don’t try these kinds of audibles unless you can create a unique, on-brand message that’s timely. Remember: What’s good for the agency isn’t necessarily good for the brand.
We all know the challenges of engaging your audience on social. But with a little strategy, you can take control of the second screen and dominate the Twitterverse. Expertly coordinated hashtags that are relevant to the content will connect with the audience you are trying to reach in a new way across both channels and maximize your marketing dollars.
by Mattr Marketing | May 12, 2014
(Originally posted in Social Media Today)
When it comes to signing on celebrity endorsements, most brands are looking for the hottest celebrity they can find. But landing a huge star is no guarantee of brand success — just look at Alec Baldwin and Wegmans Food Markets or Kim Kardashian and QuickTrim. These brands assumed that the star’s popularity would do the work. It didn’t, and the promotions failed.
Kim Kardashian and QuickTrim weren’t a match made in Marketing heaven.
The chemistry that makes a celebrity endorsement successful is much more than popularity and price; it’s about finding the right celebrity for your target audience and developing a relationship between the two.
Fortunately, there’s an effective market research tool you can use to identify your brand’s celebrity match for free: Twitter. Savvy brands will use this tool to find the best celebrity — not necessarily the most popular one — to win big with their target audience.
Using Twitter for Market Research
It’s easy to overlook Twitter as a market research tool because of its social nature, but with the right approach, the following qualities can make Twitter a powerful tool to inform your research:
1. Twitter has loads of easily accessible public data.
Because Twitter offers marketers so much public data, it’s easy to create a comprehensive view of a given user and his audience. Using this data, you can calculate the uniqueness or over-representation ratios between the celebrity influencer and your own brand’s followers to find the overlap.
For example, look at @FIFAWorldCup’s followers’ sports influencers and interests. Jack Wilshere, the Arsenal footballer, is the most popular star with a whopping 1.2 million followers. But Clint Dempsey, a U.S. footballer, has a higher ratio of follower crossover than Wilshire.
Which athlete would offer the best value for an advertiser? If you’re Coca-Cola and you’re spending more than $100 million to sponsor the World Cup, you might choose both. But if your budget is slightly smaller, Clint Dempsey or even Alex Morgan could offer great value.
Remember, what you’re looking for is a higher density of your target persona within the celebrity’s existing followers, not just the celebrity with the highest stats.
2. Twitter speaks to a younger and more ethnically diverse demographic.
Your company’s target market research determines the right social media platform for your promotions. Right now, Twitter beats out Facebook’s share of the young, urban, and more ethnically diverse.
Use this to your advantage by utilizing Twitter for campaigns that target popular celebrities among these demographics, such as multi-screen Latina viewers who use Twitter as an accompaniment to TV.
3. Twitter makes it easy to identify the personality and authenticity of the influencer.
The character restrictions and in-the-moment nature of Twitter leads its users and media outlets to present a more genuine and unfiltered personality. Not only does this help you distinguish between the right celebrity and the wrong one, but this authentic, conversational tone also resonates with users across the globe. The more natural the conversation is to that celebrity’s audience, the more authentic the message received by your target market.
Choosing the Right Celebrity
It’s tempting to jump on the popularity train and secure the most expensive endorsement you can afford. But when it doesn’t work out, that approach may cost you more than just money. Aligning your brand with a celebrity who doesn’t resonate with your customers can permanently damage your brand. Here’s how to identify the celebrity who will win over your target market:
1. Extract a sample set of engaged users.
Identify a sample of 500-1,000 users who have engaged with your brand recently in the form of retweets, favorites, and replies. Since you’re only using people who’ve engaged with you, you know they’re real people — not bots — who are likely to engage if given the right kind of content.
2. Segment, then identify, your target personas.
Always segment your sample to build the most targeted persona possible. It’s easier to do when you first begin your research. Segmenting your audience will allow you to identify not just your most engaged personas, but also your under-engaged personas. Your under-engaged followers have an incredible capacity for growth, so don’t ignore them.
3. Mine your segments for common interests and celebrities.
Take each of your targeted personas and evaluate their common interests and celebrities using Twitter’s free API or a low-cost analytics application. Which names and brands pop up? Create a list of possible connections and overlapping interests.
4. Calculate two important numbers.
First, calculate the percentage of your target persona that follows each celebrity, and then calculate the percentage of Twitter users that follow each celebrity. We know that there are about 250 million active users on Twitter. Simply compare the ratios.
For example, Jack Wilshere has 1.2 million followers and is followed by .5 percent of all Twitter users (1.2 million divided by 240 million). Clint Dempsey, on the other hand, is only followed by .16 percent of all Twitter users. If you were looking to make a high engagement connection that zones in on FIFA’s target persona on limited funds, Dempsey would be the obvious choice.
Most brands overlook Twitter. But it provides detailed information in a natural environment that can help you identify and engage the right celebrity for your brand. The best celebrity spokesperson for your company is the one who has the most in common with your target market — not just the one who’s most popular around the world. Rather than jumping on the celebrity with the largest following, take to Twitter, and use its rich data to make an informed decision.
by Mattr Marketing | May 8, 2014
Ask many a sports enthusiast and they would probably agree- a sporting event just isn’t complete without a cold beverage. Specifically, a cold beer. And that mentality holds true for the previously dry stadiums of Brazil, which will be required to serve beer in all 12 stadiums hosting the World Cup matches.
Budweiser is the official beer sponsor of the World Cup in Brazil.
That’s reason enough for Budweiser to take the role of official beer sponsor again this year (they’re one of FIFA’s longest standing sponsors). Pushing to be recognized as an International beer brand, U.S. brewed Budweiser has a suitable Marketing canvas through the World Cup. Their ‘Heroic’ World Cup campaign, themed ‘Rise as One’, will be highly visible now through the end of the month-long tournament.
Budweiser became one of the first World Cup sponsors to announce significant partnerships for World Cup- specifically with Fox Sports and Vice Video- to unveil several documentaries celebrating “humanity and perseverance”. These partnerships lead nicely into part three of our World Cup series, which focuses on identifying your audience’s interests and most shared media to improve your overall campaign. We’ll discuss ways Budweiser might enhance their ‘Rise as One’ campaign, as well as ways that rival Miller Lite, which has yet to step into the World Cup Marketing trenches, might compete with the official sponsor.
Their Eyes Are on More than the Ball
Digging deep into your audience’s interests isn’t a new Marketing concept, and it’s one all Advertisers should take advantage of in order to gain an advantage in any campaign. It’s important to know where your audience’s eyes, wallets and loyalties lie. Looking at the @FIFAWorldCup audience, you can identify not only their most popular interests- everything from brands, to media, to celebrities- but also those interests that are most unique to @FIFAWorldCup engagers in relation to all of Twitter.
Looking at the list of ‘Top Unique Interests’ below, you’ll find that most of them might seem somewhat obvious for a soccer fan- so they might already be areas that are saturated with World Cup noise. But you’ll also find more unique interests buried in the list, like tennis player Andy Murray or the founder of the Virgin empire, Richard Branson.
FIFA unique non-soccer interests include Andy Murray and Richard Branson.
Partnering in some way with tennis-themed media or television might have been a good decision for Budweiser, assuming the same eyes will be fixed to the World Cup in June.
Similarly, if you’re on the Miller Lite Marketing team and you’re planning a unique ambush attack, partnering with Virgin might be successful- perhaps a series of in-flight TV ads on all Virgin flights or a series of YouTube ads with Richard Branson as the celebrity endorser. If you’re a smaller brand with a smaller budget, you might have to be more creative using the same themes. How can you incorporate tennis or Richard Branson in your online campaign?
Put Content Where Content is Shared
Looking at the media that your audience shares the most is a great way to identify where to promote your campaign. Take a look at the FIFA audience’s most currently shared media below:
Advertisers might consider posting content on Goal.com, one of the FIFA audience’s most shared media.
After examining the most shared media for @FIFAWorldCup, either beer brand might decide to initiate a World Cup themed Instagram campaign, since it tops the list of shared media. Or they might utilize the largest soccer website in the world, Goal.com, for online ads, interesting polls and other Marketing tactics- assuming that since the FIFA audience is sharing a lot of information from the site, they might also be clicking through to get more info.
These are just a few hints on unique ways Advertisers can push through the noise of the World Cup, and get noticed by their fans. Beginning next week, we’ll publish the first of a series of reports to track the Personas of both the FIFA audience, as well as the World Cup official sponsors and ambush Marketers, to see which brands are on the right track with their campaigns.
by Mattr Marketing | May 5, 2014
(Originally posted in Memeburn)
Major world events like the World Cup are also major social media events.
1.73 billion — that’s how many people use social networks around the globe. And when consumers take an interest in major world events, those events become social as well.
With almost 1-billion viewers in 2010, the FIFA World Cup is the perfect opportunity for companies to break into the market of global social marketing campaigns in a cost-effective way.
But for some reason, many companies still seem hesitant to jump into the conversation.
Without experience in the global advertising market, the noise of hundreds of thousands of users on a given topic might seem confusing at first. But don’t let the noise distract you from the benefits.
It’s going to be tough, and it’s going to be noisy, but if your company wants to expand its reach internationally, the 2014 World Cup is the place to do it.
Start small to build big
It’s easy to get caught up in the numbers. The trick is to start small and build big to create a digestible international marketing campaign. Here’s how to use your company’s assets to build a big online presence for the World Cup:
1. Dust off your brand personas
If you try to hit all your users with the same message in the same format, no one will respond. Social media is about personalised communication. Target the specific brand personas that work for your brand.
Who are they? What motivates them to click? Identify which of these personas are likely to follow soccer, and speak to them in a way that will resonate.
2. Hit them where they hang out
Forget CNN, Mashable, and the Huffington Post. For large events like the World Cup, top media outlets and publishers will be out of your budget.
Look to your brand personas to discover where your audience is likely to hang out online. Uncover those fringe networks of bloggers, sports pubs, or forums. These outlets will be far less expensive and much more eager to take your marketing dollars. For example, look at the unique media for @FIFAWorldCup:
Unique Media for @FIFAWorldCup include the sports blog Grantland.
This information reveals a key data point: your target persona who engages with FIFA reads the sports blog Grantland more than others. Using this approach for other Twitter handles can help you discover opportunities.
3. Take a risk with fine-tuned content
Personal interests drive social media user engagement. People only click links that speak to their interests — everything else is tuned out.
Once you’ve identified your prospective audience’s preferred media publishers and celebrities, join in with genuine conversation.
Don’t throw out context-less product or service offers. Use what you know to engage with users in news and updates about the World Cup in a way they’ll enjoy. Are your target users interested in topical discounts or thoughtful blog posts? Will they respond to calls to action or be repelled by them?
To make an impression, your content needs to take a calculated stand on topics that appeal to your target personas.
4. Expand beyond your followers
When you’re creating original content, don’t just focus on the followers you already have or you’ll miss out. There are probably people out there who’d be interested in reading or sharing your tweet but don’t follow you. Use pertinent hashtags to reach users by topic.
To focus your promotions, research popular hashtags and write to them. You may be surprised by what you find.
Use your audience’s favorite hashtags to promote your content.
In this example, #MUFC, or Manchester United Football Club, is the top hashtag used by FIFA’s most-engaged persona. Using this information, you can write content relevant to Manchester United or engage with #MUFC hashtags that have a tertiary interest in the World Cup.
Breaking into the global social media demographic with this year’s FIFA World Cup can help your brand reach a whole new audience. By approaching the small, personalized details with a sense of the larger picture, you can leverage this event to gain worldwide exposure.
Once you’ve tested this approach, you don’t have to stop there. Build marketing campaigns around the Olympics, Formula 1 racing, the Tour de France, and the Rugby World Cup. Each of these events attracts millions of viewers and will help your company dominate the Twitterverse.
How will your company leverage the World Cup to expand its brand?
