With the 2014 World Cup now in full flow, a billion pair of eye fixate upon millions of TV screens around the globe flickering with the celebrations of football. Yet as studies and reports suggest, it wont just be television screens that have the monopoly of football fans attentions.
According to a study conducted by GlobalWebIndex one in three UK Twitter users claim to be much more interested in the 2014 World Cup than the previous tournament in South Africa meaning of course that smartphones, tablets and Twitter will play an integral part in the World Cup experience
A National Conversation
Although this new founded enthusiasm for the 2014 campaign can not be fully explained the excitement generated around the Brazilian football festival is one that Twitter can’t and hasn’t been able to ignore.
TV over the past few years has become a much more social event. In England, over 87% of Twitter users will be watching the World Cup live on television and when they’re not roughly 46% of them check Twitter on smartphones or tablets for live match scores and results.
For Twitter and other major brands this represents huge opportunities for engagement and figures are already showing this.
For example, brands are seeing a massive 95% increase in message association when TV and Twitter combine as opposed to just TV influence. There is also an incredible 60% increase in purchase intent during a joint branding and twitter message campaign.
They’re Loving It
Take McDonals #FryFutbol hashtag as an example (promoting McDonalds augmented reality football app for mobile devices). During the First few hours of the 2014 World Cup opening ceremony #FryFutbol was appearing on the home pages of twitter users in 57 countries making it the first true global brand trend and conversation point.
The World Cup presents brands on Twitter such as McDonalds with a unique marketing window of 4 weeks to showcase their products to emerging markets at key times.
Twitter Triumphs
Not only have global brands such as McDonalds successfully latched on to World Cup fever, Twitter itself has managed to capture the imagination of the World Cup. By introducing an innovative and interactive self-styled ‘World Cup Starter Kit’ to its mass audience Twitter is allowing users to select their home nation football team via a new interface which unlocks custom profile images, header images, scores in real-time as well as key match highlights. Another exciting feature is the re-introduction of the popular “Hashflags” which give users the ability to pin their home nations flag to their own timeline and tweets.
This cute move has ensured many users have migrated away from traditional blogs for match updates towards Twitter’s platform to catch the latest scores via tweets. The Twitter brand has cleverly managed to plug-in to people who wouldn’t normally get involved with the football. It’s encouraged some users to engage in something they may not have otherwise been bothered with and gained millions of new users in the process.
With so many brands looking to the World Cup as a superb opportunity to increase brand awareness and profile Twitter has clearly emerged as a big winner, and will continue to grow as the tournament develops and long after it too.
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