Infographic: Who’s the Audience? FIFA World Cup Edition, May 18

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?...

How to Take Control of the Second-Screen and Dominate the Twitterverse

(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...

Identify Your Brand’s Celebrity Match with Twitter

(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. 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....

World Cup Advertising Wars, Part 3: Your Audience is More than Soccer

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. 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...

4 Tips to Expand Your Brand During the FIFA World Cup

(Originally posted in Memeburn) 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....