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…

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In a recent online poll by Faxo.com, the public was asked where they would most like popstar, Justin Bieber, to tour. The public said North Korea. When ‘the public’ cast its vote on July 7th, it was, however, predominantly made up of fans of the online bulletin board, 4chan.org, which encouraged visitors to hijack the poll and manipulate the results.

Given that Faxo.com is currently running a new poll entitled ‘‘Justin Bieber Loves Animals’’ it looks as though the site’s intentions have always been sardonic rather than sales-driven. And given that 4chan.com members delighted at the thought of sending Bieber to the ‘axis of evil’ this again looks unlikely to be a PR ploy.

This is the latest in a series of online attacks against Bieber – BBC News online reports that 4chan.com also recently encouraged visitors to search for ‘Justin Bieber Syphilis’, sending the search term up to the top of the ranks of Google Trend’s Hot Searches list. Bieber is also dead, apparently. Read the full article here – http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/10506482.

Bieber’s record label, Universal, has denied any involvement in the poll, calling the whole thing a hoax. Even the most guerrilla of campaigns will avoid associating clients with animals, STD’s, communism and/or death, so by process of elimination we can assume the conversations were not sparked by the Bieber marketing camp, but by a cult of Bieber-haters ready to topple the pop prince. The joke, however, is on them, because all they’ve done is give him a leg up.

Team Bieber was quick to react to the attacks, reinforcing his social media presence and ensuring he had a steady stream of tweets going out to fans both responding to the attacks – “let’s take some time to answer some crazy rumors….these are always fun.…” – and thanking them for their support – “I like answering all your questions. Thank u all for caring. Just want u to know I care to and I’m just a normal kid [sic.]”

By July 16th Mashable reported that Justin Bieber was battling with Lada Gaga for the YouTube top spot – his video for “Baby ft. Ludacris” having captured 245,746,720 views. By maintaining a strong microblogging presence and openly responding to the attacks, Bieber has successfully managed to convert what could be career-damaging sentiment into one of the most viewed online videos of all time.

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So I probably should have got round to writing this last week, but seeing as I’m STILL mentioning Social Media Influence in about 90% of my conversations, I’ve decided it does warrant a post.

Image via Wikipedia

Social Media Influence 2010 was held at London’s Marriott Hotel on June 22^nd. An all day conference, it was interesting because, for the most part, it wasn’t simply a lot of people saying ‘isn’t social media great?’ (although there was some of that.) We know social media is great, we wouldn’t be here otherwise. There was some real insight from global brands such as Starbucks, Pepsico and Dell, alongside discussion panels and Q&A sessions.

The main thing that I took away from the day was that brands and agencies need to be prepared to take risks. Social media is new; the rules haven’t been defined so it’s not always about following the tried and tested. Think big, think new: most of the time your ambition will be respected, even if the results aren’t what you hoped for. Starbucks in the States has built a reputation for being one of the most forward thinking brands globally – they’ve pioneered mayor offers and badges on foursquare, organised a global sing-along on YouTube and built a massive community along the way. How many sales have they generated directly from social media? (This was a question on the day). They’re not sure, but at this level of exposure, it’s not really the point: the intangible brand value of being seen as an innovator is huge.

Having the support to take risks in social media comes from making the tools, platforms and activities an integral part of all of your activity. Stakeholders love the immediacy of social media interaction and (sometimes) the results. Pepsico has tapped into this by creating a social media war room – a physical bank of computers and screens that sits in the middle of the office, providing live updates from its brands’ social media pages. Social media is THERE, in-your-face, the buzz of the activity clear for everyone to see. Check it out for yourself here. There are risks and implications in going down this route, but social media isn’t about being perfect, it’s about being good, and Pepsico are demonstrating that perfectly.

Ultimately, being bold and brave will bring rewards, but it might bring a little bit of egg on your face. It’s nothing to be afraid of; you’ll often learn more from an unsuccessful campaign than you will from an award winning one. Key phrase of the day? It’s easier to ask for forgiveness than to get permission. So what are you waiting for?

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As we all know, for some time now, media-savvy companies have been taking full advantage of YouTube, Facebook and Twitter, for a combination of brand-building, direct sales, customer service and PR. This has left us all wondering what will be the next big ‘thing’.

Could it be the controversial Chatroulette? For those of you that have had your head in the sand for the past few months, this is a video dating/exhibitionism site, started at the end of last year, which randomly connects users from around the world, enabling them to communicate using webcam, text and images. On closer inspection, users share webcam footage with each other and much of it is of a rather dubious nature – and that’s putting it mildly!

Despite what its critics say, the site is growing massively by the day and according to comScore, Chatroulette drew 960,000 U.S. visitors in February, up from 109,000 in January.

So, how can brands benefit from such a strange, sometimes obscene, phenomenon?

With the general user-base being made up of people who want to expose themselves, people looking for nudity, and curious/new users, there aren’t a lot of brands that would knowingly market themselves to digital exhibitionists, but its growing attention does present an opportunity for brands. In light of this, surely brands should ask themselves a question before trying out any new medium — especially one with a shady reputation. What do they hope to get out of it?

One brand has bitten the marketing bullet and dipped its toes in the murky waters of Chatroulette. French Connection is currently using the site to run a competition where men are being asked to set up a real date with a girl on the site. The bloke not only gets a date but also £250 worth of French Connection vouchers. The competition is part of French Connection’s The Man, The Woman campaign launched in February, which aims to draw more attention to its men’s range of clothing.

Personally, I’m not entirely convinced. Is this merely a case of social media bandwagon hopping? Brands who want to be perceived as edgy simply jumping on to the hot new thing in social media? And do we really want to see the naked truth?

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Last week saw the announcement in the press of the Indian Premier League’s plan to stream the whole of the 2010 tournament live via YouTube. As many commentators have noted over the past week, this calls into question the whole notion of TV rights. With the focus of entertainment shifting more and more towards online video (recent statistics in the UK prove that services like iPlayer are showing no signs of slowing their popularity), how long will it be before we see more of these type of deals being agreed?

This announcement will probably not raise too many eyebrows in Europe. Cricket is popular in England, yes, but only when England are taking part. The absence of Andrew Flintoff and Kevin Pietersen from this year’s IPL means there is little focus on the tournament in the mainstream media. But what would happen if a similar deal was announced for something much more coveted by the masses? For example, the clamour has always been to make the Ashes free to air again. What could be more open to view than a tournament streamed online?

The main benefit of streaming online is obvious – the ability for advertising to pervade the consciousness on an ongoing basis (banner ads, in-game advertising), rather than being restricted to 30 second ad breaks. This is particularly useful during football (soccer, for any US readers), where the game does not have the same natural breaks as other sports. The issue of quality is no longer an issue either, with YouTube able to host content in Full HD 1080p. More and more TVs now come with widgets and internet video capability, so mass participation can be achieved without everyone having to crowd round a small computer screen. You can watch YouTube anywhere and everywhere; lunchtime kick offs and major differences in time zones become less of an issue.

Measuring consumption on YouTube (and other online video platforms) is easier too. Do broadcasters really know how many people are ACTUALLY watching their flagship sports coverage? Google and YouTube know at a glance. What kinds of people are watching? If you’re a registered user, Google and YouTube know all about you and your habits (for better or worse, but that’s another debate for another day). Plus, we all know the pattern that the adoption of new ideas takes – get the sports fans and the music fans in first (the live stream of U2’s gig on YouTube received 10 million views last year). Everyone’s talking about online video this year.

However, as with most landmarks and advances in online and social media, it is unlikely that there will be an instant spate of these deals being agreed in the short term. What normally happens is there is a wait and see mentality. Let’s see if this pilot programme works out; if it falls flat, everyone will say ‘well, it was never going to work was it?’ If it takes off, well then the sky’s the limit. Many people already use illegal streams to watch English Premier League games not shown on Sky and ESPN. Niche sports only covered in passing by major broadcasters could be given a new lease of life through a YouTube stream. Broadcast rights negotiations are going to be much more interesting in future. How many other companies have competed against the power of Google and come out victorious?

Related articles by Zemanta

• YouTube Dabbles in Live Sports With IPL Matches (mashable.com)
• YouTube To Live-Stream Sports With Multicam – Howzat?! [YouTube] (gizmodo.com)

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