10 Ways Companies are Leveraging the World Cup to Their Marketing Advantage
June 12, 2014
10 World Cup marketing promotions companies are using to score brand awareness points with their prospects and customers.
Sports events are notorious breeding grounds for marketing campaigns. Just think of the SuperBowl. The World Cup may playing catch-up with this in comparison, but promotion is definitely hitting a stride this year. Take a look at our top picks of companies leveraging the World Cup to boost their own marketing efforts.
1) Google
Of course Google is taking advantage of the opportunity, posting an animated home page doodle coinciding with the opening ceremony June 12, 2014. You can see it in action here.
2) McDonald’s
Stepping into left field this fast food giant is going international with a special app just for the world cup. Check out what they have to say about it on Twitter.
3) Twitter
Twitter has put up an entire custom hashtag splash page just for the 2014 World Cup, complete with up-to-date scoreboard, tweets, team links, upcoming schedules, and more fun stuff. Follow the action here: twitter.com/hashtag/WorldCup
4) Pepsi
Pepsi shoots for the goal but misses with their interactive video below — that’s right, it’s interactive! Totally a cool concept but frankly I’m a little underwhelmed with the actual interactiveness of it. See for yourself here.
5) CocaCola
CocaCola created an entire website just for this World Cup. Check it out at www2.happinessflag.com. The Happiness Flag is actually a giant Photomosaic®, the largest ever created, constructed from photos and tweets submitted by fans from around the world. Watch the video below to see how it was made:
6) Nike
Nike seems to be leading the battle of the sports brands when it comes to the World Cup, edging out Puma and Adidas, the two other sporting goods manufacturers competing for market share and sales. Nike is the official supplier of sports kits for ten teams participating in the championship such as Brazil, England, Holland, and the US, among others. Adidas, meanwhile, is supplying nine teams, including Germany, Argentina and Spain.
Nike made its World Cup social splash with this online video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iaVtinE8oO8
7) Adidas
Sports giant Adidas is one of the 2014 world cup sponsors and also one of the few companies to run paid advertising in Google, which is smart because they’ll be able to capitalize on fans worldwide by having the right gear for that audience.
8) Beats by Dre
Beats launched a video showing the behind the scenes “before the game”. A separate splash page even includes quote by some of the players like Chicharito, saying that “music before the game helps me reach the state I need.”
9) Samsung Mobile
The mobile world should consider the world cup audience as part of their playground and really should be dominating the marketing. Most seem to be rather silent, however, but Samsung has made a splash with their #Galaxy11 video – The Training. Take a look — I promise you’ll get chills:
10) DiningIn
The dining delivery service notified their users via email to browse foods related to countries playing in the worldwide championship. A small yet impactful campaign.
What do you think of these targeted marketing campaigns? Any you’ve come across that we’ve missed?
Image courtesy of Mike Mozart
Photo by: Isak Aronsson