With a new football season underway and an eagerly anticipated Premier League campaign due to start this weekend, I’ve been considering my consumption of the global game recently and how it’s changed.  Not just for individuals, but for brands as well.

Everyone knows football is big business with dedicated, die-hard fans.  So social media provides the perfect forum for fans to interact, share their thoughts, keep up to date with their team’s latest gossip and transfer news.  The World Cup was also a ‘first’ for two reasons.  Not only was it the first tournament to be hosted in Africa, it was also dubbed the first ever ‘social media’ World Cup.

Interesting stats courtesy of www.simplyzesty.com back this up too.  Coca Cola’s sponsored hash tag #wc2010 received 86m impressions in 24 hours.  The Vuvuzela iPhone app was number 1 on iTunes in 50 countries in June.  Nike’s World Cup advert received more than 19million views on YouTube.  3,238 tweets per second recorded during the Japan Denmark match (the normal rate is 750).  497,000 ‘Likes’ for the England’s Team Facebook fanpage (seems like too many to me and it’s now more than 550,000?!)

Interestingly, brands who weren’t even ‘official’ sponsors in South Africa this year, maximised their use of online channels for their campaigns.  Nike’s ‘Write the Future’ campaign for example dominated the social media landscape prior to the World Cup.  Nielsen also found that Budweiser, who paid a heavy price for the global sponsorship rights, was trounced by their rival Carlsberg in terms of online chatter volumes.

Everyone, from fans to journalists, used Twitter to experience this tournament, with dedicated World Cup hash tags making commentary easier to source.  Twitter is a serious presence in social commentary, an effective means of gauging response and reaction to cultural events for brands looking for tactical as well as more strategic territories to associate themselves with.  Appreciating how consumers are changing their media behaviour reiterates the value of events like the World Cup.

It’s the brands who take the time to understand this relationship, understand where their fans are talking, that grab the real opportunities to engage with consumers.  More importantly, brands are able to measure engagement providing a compelling case for new forms of marketing and sales promotion.

It seems all football fans need now is an internet connection, or a smartphone and the information is at their fingertips.  The combination of podcasts (Guardian Football weekly), websites (nothing beats BBC Football, Football365), Twitter (some of the biggest official club feeds include Chelsea’s stamfordthelion Liverpool’s LFCTV) and Arsenal’s (arsenaldotcom), live streams over IPTV all prove valuable to brands looking to capitalise on fans’ online presence following their passions for the beautiful game.

However, not everyone will get it right first time.  As Umbro found out trying to run a Foursquare promotion at a Manchester City home game last season, aiming to create a record for the biggest number of people checking in at the same location.  Credit to Umbro for engaging with Foursquare so early on, however uptake was minimal.  More investment in the incentive to check in, free tickets or a replica shirt for example, rather than a t-shirt, could have produced further uptake.

Or was it because there aren’t many football fans using Foursquare yet?  We’ve seen brands succeed at the World Cup so I will be interested to monitor if those using social media tactics to good effect during the 2010/11 season…

Image via Wikipedia

Once every four years the whole country goes a bit crazy for a few months. Flags get attached to cars, people with little or no interest in football suddenly get wrapped up in pub debates about who exactly should be England’s third-choice goalkeeper, and businesses the length and breadth of the country rack their brains as to how best tap into this collective delirium.

Yes, 2010 is a World Cup year. Having been starved of an England appearance in a major football tournament for four long years, this summer’s tournament in South Africa is already looking set to be one of the most heavily branded and marketed ever. Adidas, Coca Cola, Emirates, Hyundai, Sony, Visa, Budweiser and McDonalds are amongst the official sponsors and partners.

However, being an official sponsor means you have to observe FIFA’s draconian rules. Doing your own thing and not even mentioning the World Cup can open a bit more creativity. Toshiba will refund the price of your TV if England win the tournament, whilst Currys show a little less (or is it more?) faith by giving ten pounds cash back for each goal scored by the Three Lions. James Hall at The Telegraph has already looked at these in more detail: they’ll only be worth analysing if England win the tournament, scoring a bucketful of goals along the way.

Online, Sure are heavily promoting their ‘last eight’ sweepstake, which mentions nothing about a World Cup. It vaguely mentions ‘your team’ in ‘South Africa’, but everyone knows what they’re referring to. Pepsi have combined their offline and online marketing in an attempt to derail official tournament partners Coca Cola. Africa-themed TVCs featuring Leo Messi and Frank Lampard run concurrently with the www.MAXITLEGENDS.com video competition and a digital game called Football Hero. Pringles have targeted their 3 million Facebook fans with a Peter Crouch endorsed ‘Pringoooals’ mechanic – cheesy, but ingenious and 100% unofficial.

Offline, the Sun has gone down its tired jingoistic route, recruiting former England manager Terry Venables. Yawn. More effective are Kit Kat’s Cross Your Fingers commercials and billboards, mixing a unique brand identity with football (again, without mentioning the World Cup once). Facts and figures are behind Nestle’s marketing drive – the last World Cup in 2006 resulted in a 16% sales hike for four-finger bars and a 38% boost for Chunky. This might explain why Nestle have doubled the amount of money invested in the campaign.

Ultimately, it comes down to ROI. How much money are you going to make back from the investment you’ve put in? If you’re banking solely on the fortunes of a football team, I wouldn’t expect too much.

Rumours, insinuations and accusations have been bubbling around for a while now, but today’s announcement that the European Commission has launched a preliminary anti-monopoly probe into Google’s affairs is the first concrete action to challenge the firm’s tactics.

Brief summary without getting too technical – Google allegedly artificially demotes articles in its search results to discourage users from visiting particular companies.

Google’s response to today’s allegations has been simply to swat them aside, claiming “this kind of scrutiny goes with the territory when you are a large company.” They will also be encouraged that much of the disquiet can be traced back to Microsoft, making the claims seem like a case of sour grapes.

Google would also argue that its search engine algorithms are as much a part of its unique appeal and success as, say, Coca Cola’s or KFC’s recipes are part of theirs. SEO experts feel they have a general idea of how Google works, but many of the intricate vagaries and updates remain closely guarded secrets only revealed to an inner cabal. Google believe this is its intellectual property, and that making too much of the information available would weaken its position and open the company up to its competitors. All companies have their own ideas, and in a free society, they should have the right to hold onto them shouldn’t they?

The position is weakened somewhat by the fact that Google’s formulas are constantly being tweaked and updated. Coca Cola and KFC introduce new products, but their core offering remains basically the same as it has always been. Google can change its algorithms at a whim, constantly updating and reacting to patterns as it likes.

Many in the industry have a love/hate relationship with Google. For some, Google is a team of evil scientists, seconded in Silicon Valley bunkers coming up with ever more diabolical schemes to rule search engines and, one day, maybe even achieve total world domination. Google Government anyone? For others a paragon of what can be achieved through always being one step ahead of the competition.

My suggestion to Google would be: a little transparency can go a long way. Give us a crumb of insight, enough to dampen the criticism, but you can always leave your audience wanting more.