Image via WikipediaNeilsen details how the shoe giant Nike has undertaken a very effective piece of ambush marketing, no doubt to the chagrin of the major event sponsors.
By monitoring the social media buzz they had noted that it was their brand that were most associated with the World Cup, even more than the official partners and sponsors.
Nike's "Write The Future" campaign neatly gazumped that of Adidas by capturing 30+% of the Buzz while the official sponsor has thus far only registered a little over 14%.
Carlsberg Beer have done something similar, bettering the official sponsor, Budweiser.
According to Alex Burmaster, vice president of communications for Nielsen. "Social media has made ambush marketing easier, simply because of the virality of it. Some people call it an echo chamber."FIFA is not taking this lying down and at last count their lawyers have filed 2,519 cases globally against parties it accuses of ambush marketing.
Some social media platforms themselves are suffering as a result of the World Cup. Twitter appearing to be feeling the strain. Track activity by topic, players, or team using CNN's Twitter Buzz. There are reportedly 150,000 tweets per hour per game; no wonder Twitter is creaking.
Neilsen has also used Brand Association Mapping to identify the differing perspectives of the Cup between countries. Note the UK example below. The words "winning" and "championship" reveal high expectations of their team. Click on the chart to enlarge it.
Trendrr provides a good overview of social media activity associated with World Cup 2010
There is an increasing vehemence in the manner that traditional media are pursuing blog owners who reproduce their content.
