In our last ‘Who’s the Audience?’ post, we highlighted two brands, Adidas and Nike, that were hitting the @FIFAWorldCup ‘Rugged Male’ audience head on with their campaigns.
For the week of May 25, we looked at two beer brands- official beer sponsor Budweiser, and competitor Miller Lite, a brand that’s so far kept quiet during the World Cup buzz. Interestingly, both brands pulled much more engagement from ‘Reliable Females’ than from the ‘Rugged Male’ Persona that has dominated @FIFAWorldCup’s Twitter feed.
Week Highlights: ‘Rise As One’ Times Two
For Budweiser, which launched their “Rise As One” World Cup campaign in late February (and probably thought about the details years in advance), there’s a very good reason for the big shift in engagement. After monitoring engagement with their campaign hashtag ‘Rise As One’ on Twitter, one of those ‘surprises’ that Marketers should keep an eye on during any social campaign began to surface. You can see from the highly shared tweet below where we’re headed:
It seems that the WNBA San Antonio Stars team has a similar ‘Rise As One’ tagline for their 2014 Season campaign. Since they played a game Wednesday May 28, engagement with that specific hashtag shot up on Twitter. Apparently, a lot of ‘Reliable Females’ enjoy the WNBA.
Why is this relevant? It’s something to pay attention to when pulling analytics about your audience during a campaign. Obviously, pulling information from the wrong audience can skew segmentation results. Had Budweiser optimized their running campaign to speak to ‘Reliable Females’, they probably wouldn’t have seen any improvement in engagement.
The point is: paying attention to ANY new trends or events on social and adjusting your campaign accordingly will help ensure your campaign is a success. Is Budweiser even aware that their main World Cup campaign hashtag is shared with another sporting event? That’s unclear. What is clear is that this mistake could fall in line with their notorious 2013 hashtag fail:
Of Interest: Which Light Beer Will Bite?
Rumor has it that Coors Light might be the ambush beer brand to watch for World Cup 2014, rather than Miller Lite. Although Miller Lite is pulling some soccer themed engagement, there’s not enough to dig in for segmentation purposes just yet. We’ll keep an eye on both beer brands starting next week. And if either are in fact planning an ambush campaign, here’s some great advice on how Marketers can stay within the rules of that game.