Reviewing 7 major brand cases that broke the circle at the World Cup and how sports marketing will be played in the future

This year's World Cup has come to an end, but the various marketing activities that brands have carried out around the World Cup are still continuing. With the growing size of the fan base in my country and the growing domestic sports atmosphere, brands are bound to show a competitive attitude of increasing competition in the battlefield of sports event marketing. The author of the following article explains to us how major brands shine in World Cup marketing. Let's take a look.

As the Qatar World Cup comes to an end, the audience has "left", but the "marketers" have not stopped.

Every major event like this is not only a contest between players on the field, but also a large-scale competition of marketing events. When a World Cup is over, it not only brings marketers a hearty carnival of games, but also leaves behind a practical guide to marketing that is worth reviewing and sorting out.

When reviewing this year's Qatar World Cup and previous World Cups, what is the biggest difference for consumers and marketers? It is the explosion of participation and interaction on mobile terminals. After Douyin won the copyright of the Qatar World Cup, the audience began to concentrate on Douyin. According to data, the total number of viewers of Douyin's World Cup live broadcasts reached 10.6 billion, and the total number of user live broadcast interactions reached 1.3 billion. The concentration of the audience has greatly affected the brand's choice of the main marketing battlefield.

Based on this, this year there are a lot of new World Cup marketing activities, which have introduced new gameplay on the Douyin platform. Of course, there are also many new experiences and inspirations.

In this regard, Morketing has reviewed the World Cup marketing methods of 7 major brands such as Adidas, Mengniu, and Meituan on ByteDance and conducted an in-depth analysis. We hope that marketers can find some ideas and inspiration for marketing for the next major event from this analysis post. From these marketing activities, we have sorted out 7 sets of World Cup marketing methods. Overall, under the entertainment, short video, and interactive genes of the Douyin platform, the main feature of the brands' participation methods is "light", which allows users to quickly participate in the activities.

1. Adidas: Seizing the core elements of the game and making friends with the ball

"Making friends through football" is a normal and common scene for all football fans when watching football at the World Cup. As a brand with a strong sportsmanship, Adidas has grasped this point very well.

As the provider of the official ball of the Qatar World Cup, Al Rihla (journey), Adidas launched the "Football is still so good" campaign on the Douyin platform during the World Cup, using different advertising forms such as videos, searches, challenges, must-sees, lucky boxes, etc. to repeatedly reach users on the site, so that people who really love football can truly experience that "football is still so good."

In terms of breakdown, Adidas first sounded the clarion call for this World Cup with a video of several football superstars "assembling", and then emphasized the brand and users' reunion in the quadrennial World Cup season through a series of short film promotions. It also interspersed the video with a surprise visit to old fans who bought World Cup jerseys four years ago, connecting the brand and users with vivid user stories, which not only showed the common love for football events, but also the deep emotional connection between the brand and users.

Of course, video is just one entry point for this marketing. In order to cooperate with the entire marketing, Adidas first made some interesting supplementary gameplay on Douyin through Douyin search, such as using creative search to display the event content on the Douyin hot search list. After clicking, you can see a large-scale brand area, and there will be a search easter egg later, which will show a video recorded by the World Cup's biggest winner "Messi". Finally, guide users to participate in the brand's Douyin challenge, forming a relatively closed-loop guidance link.

According to data from ByteDance, under this guided link, the CTV of its search easter eggs exceeded 12%, and the exposure of the Douyin hot list exceeded 60 million.

In addition, Adidas also boldly tried the lucky box on Douyin, still using "football" as the core element, and made a video with 3D football visual effects. The balls will continue to fall from the top of the information flow screen. At the same time, during the falling process, users can feel the vibration feedback of the falling footballs while holding their mobile phones. Of course, the users who can see this video are also targeted based on interest users, and some users can see it while watching videos. Adidas' lucky box is a very eye-catching gameplay in this World Cup marketing. Users have almost no participation cost, and a light and interesting experience is achieved.

Finally, the data shows that the drop of Adidas' "Lucky Football" increased the click-through rate by more than 300% compared to the overall market, which shows that it is still very eye-catching.

From these different ways of playing, we can see that Adidas has firmly grasped the absolute protagonist of the World Cup, "football", as the core. It not only echoes the brand's identity as the provider of the official World Cup ball, but also conveys to users in multiple scenarios the connection between the Adidas brand and football, and even the core of the sportsmanship that the brand hopes to convey to hundreds of millions of fans.

"Giving football lovers the opportunity to experience this carnival is exactly the sports spirit that Adidas hopes to convey and influence fans around the world in this World Cup," said Florian Alt, vice president of global brand communications at Adidas.

2. Mengniu: Playing the emotional card to pursue cost reduction and efficiency improvement

Looking at the entire tournament cycle of this year's Qatar World Cup, "reducing costs and increasing efficiency" seems to have become one of the key words in World Cup marketing.

The case of Mengniu is a typical example. In fact, in addition to using short films and the spiritual core of spokespersons to arouse users' emotions and engage in emotional marketing, Mengniu has become more refined in its pursuit of the overall effect of the World Cup marketing activities this time, paying more attention to the path of seeding and conversion, and converting the attracted traffic into sales.

For example, Mengniu has launched "Watch it if you watch it" + "Shake it to get Easter eggs" on Douyin. In order to achieve coverage of sports-related groups and more general sports groups during the World Cup, Mengniu started from the hot spots of the event and adopted the product gameplay of "Watch it if you watch it" to follow the hot spots. When the target users browse World Cup-related content on Douyin, the system determines that they are people interested in the World Cup.

Users will see Mengniu ads within the next 30 minutes, achieving precise delivery without affecting the user experience. Mengniu's careful maintenance of consumers' Douyin experience also reflects the light-hearted nature of this World Cup. Just shake the phone to jump to the promotion page of Mengniu's related products, which not only ensures the timely conversion rate of the users, but also further accumulates 5A people and enhances the interactivity of the World Cup situational marketing.

Judging from the data performance, Mengniu's combination of "must be shown if you watch it" + "shake for easter eggs" has achieved the result that the cost of A3 population growth is 16% lower than the information flow in the same period, the CTR is 686% higher than the industry average, and the effective playback rate is 38% higher than the industry average.

In addition, Mengniu also put a lot of effort into planting grass among the A3 (interest purchase) crowd during the World Cup. Not only did the innovative 3D twisting boot method bring a high traffic efficiency of 60%-180% for the brand, but it also brought natural brand implantation through the discussion of hot topics of the World Cup through expert videos. The high-quality original content materials accelerated the A2 circulation of the World Cup wave, and the CP active A3 cost was lower, with a single video as low as 0.26. The Mengniu brand also achieved cost reduction and efficiency improvement in A3 accumulation.

In the past few years, it has become increasingly difficult to obtain external traffic, but the efficiency of delivery cannot be guaranteed. Therefore, in order to ensure that the traffic generated by marketing activities can have a lasting impact on the brand, brands are increasingly focusing on content-rich post-link marketing as a new focus of corporate marketing activities. Companies no longer pursue simple direct purchases, but instead try to make a deeper connection between consumers' continued purchases, loyalty management, remarketing, etc. in post-link marketing and front-end advertising flows.

From the two infectious commercials to the heated competition in the final between brand ambassadors Messi and Mbappe, Mengniu has been using emotions to boost its brand voice in this year's World Cup. At the same time, it has also begun to pay more attention to the conversion and accumulation of traffic after the brand's exposure.

3. Meituan: "Winning by surprise" and taking the humorous approach

In addition to "ball" and "carnival", the World Cup can also be "strange" and "humorous".

Meituan differentiated itself by winning through “strangeness” and taking the humorous route.

While many brands are promoting the positive energy and sportsmanship brought by the World Cup, people's demand for interesting content is actually growing. Meituan sponsored the unpopular Ghanaian team and created a "sense of contrast" with the Ghanaian team composed of all African faces. In this way, it attracted the attention and heated discussions from all walks of life in a very short time and attracted a lot of attention.

Sponsoring an unpopular team is not enough. Meituan also promoted a funny short video of "Ghanaian players wearing the same jersey as the delivery boy". The Ghanaian players who appeared on the World Cup field the night before were wearing Meituan's orange and yellow uniforms and instantly turned into delivery boys.

The fun content of the video has caused many netizens to smile knowingly. In order to increase the scope of dissemination, Meituan has effectively increased the popularity of the topic through the combination strategy of "marketing promotion + native hot words to attract traffic + official announcement of the event to ignite the popularity" on Douyin. The data from the huge engine shows that the CTR of Meituan's "Ghana jersey collision takeaway brother" content has increased by 27%+ compared with the market, and the subsequent popularity has grown steadily, with a daily increase of 25%, and the number of daily views of related videos has exceeded 30 million.

It can be seen that not playing by the rules is the key to Meituan’s success in this wave of marketing operations.

In fact, the marketing battle of brands in the World Cup is actually a battle for user attention. When the brand's marketing actions and exposure can arouse user interest, mass traffic will naturally follow. Meituan was able to gain a lot of attention in this World Cup marketing, mainly because the anti-routine operation brought freshness and fun to users, making it a content that the public actively chose to consume.

After all, there is no fixed formula for marketing. When the marketing actions of a large number of brands converge, whoever can be the first to break out of the vicious circle of blind obedience can become a new trend that soothes the spiritual world of the public with the fun of breaking the routine.

4. Beijing Hyundai: Penetrate a medium and do business on Douyin

Generally speaking, brands will conduct integrated advertising across different media, but Morketing observed that Beijing Hyundai focused its communications on the TikTok channel during this World Cup, basically forming a closed-loop full-link marketing from brand advertising to retention to seeding to conversion.

Specifically, Beijing Hyundai first used the classic combination strategy of national scrolling + expert promotion as an introduction to launch the brand's full-link marketing operations on the massive engine.

Beijing Hyundai has formulated three challenges on Douyin to attract public participation, namely "World Cup Glory Moments", "My 20 Years with the World Cup" and "Tucson I8at Wins the World Cup", and guides users to participate through a national task entrance and the sharing of cash rewards.

Users can participate in the National Challenge by simply adding a designated topic and @Beijing Hyundai's official account when posting videos on the Douyin platform. The event not only lowers the threshold for user participation, but the coexistence of challenges and rewards also greatly mobilizes the enthusiasm of the public to participate in the event. The simple gameplay in the carefully prepared national participation link also reflects the light-hearted atmosphere of Beijing Hyundai's marketing event.

According to the data, the national challenge initiated by Beijing Hyundai has a cumulative playback volume of about 8 billion times, the number of videos in the event is about 650,000, and the number of creators has reached nearly 300,000 . The large amount of attention and discussion brought by the national event topic has brought the popularity and influence of the Beijing Hyundai brand to a new height during the World Cup.

In addition, Beijing Hyundai has also cooperated with a large number of Douyin influencer accounts, using the influencer's contributed videos to further reach fan groups and potential groups, thereby covering more people.

In addition to challenges and expert promotions, Beijing Hyundai has also used different marketing methods such as search easter eggs, hot lists, and in-site message promotions to reach out, accumulate water, and plant grass, etc.

After this series of operations, Beijing Hyundai's brand crowd assets have been efficiently expanded. The data from the ByteDance engine shows that the 5A crowd stratification of Beijing Hyundai brand has shown positive growth. The A3 circulation rate has increased by 191% compared with the general information flow, and the proportion of active searches after viewing has increased by 25%. The proportion of A3 in the A5 crowd has increased by 184%, and nearly 41% of the brand users have achieved a deepening of the 5A status, which has effectively improved the brand's crowd asset structure.

At the same time, Beijing Hyundai's full-link marketing on the Douyin platform, which started with challenges and influencer promotion, not only brought about an increase in the size of the relevant population, but also improved Beijing Hyundai's brand image. Data shows that the content of the marketing activities received more than 96% positive and neutral reviews, and the rate of positive comments increased by 56.81% compared to the overall.

In general, after the overall marketing offensive during the World Cup, Beijing Hyundai achieved an overall post-investment population size growth rate of over 112%, and the 5A new customer acquisition ratio reached 52.94%.

5. Sponsoring football commentary programs, Du Xiaoman has entered the "sight" of football fans

During the World Cup, in addition to paying attention to the non-stop intense competition on the green fields of Qatar, football fans will also watch various football review programs to complain and discuss the hot topics of the competition.

In this year's World Cup, Du Xiaoman chose to get into the fans' "sight" by sponsoring a football commentary program. Morketing learned that Du Xiaoman sponsored two programs related to the World Cup, namely "Hongge Talks Football" and "World Cup Talk Show Night" launched by Douyin.

"Hong Ge Talks Football" is a live commentary program with the well-known sports host Liu Jianhong as the core. During the World Cup, it presented 12 wonderful live broadcasts to the audience, attracting nearly 280 million viewers; "World Cup Talk Show Night" is the finale program in the Douyin World Cup final night broadcast, inviting talk show actors, athletes, commentators and many other cross-border guests to talk about football with the audience.

As the title sponsor of these two World Cup programs, Du Xiaoman not only delivered the brand message of "always standing up at critical moments" to the audience through video ads before the programs, but also further strengthened the brand impression in the minds of users by showing a large number of brand logos during the programs. While making these two relaxed language programs a window to display brand values, it also formed a deeper and closer connection between Du Xiaoman, the title sponsor, and the fans who watched the programs.

If "Hongge Talks Football" allows Du Xiaoman to directly reach the core of the World Cup fan group, then the brand's sponsorship of "World Cup Talk Show Night" is more like an attempt to break through the circle of different audiences. With the common attention of various audiences, this World Cup has, to some extent, become the most public-participated sports carnival, bringing together different types of audiences in front of the same screen.

Perhaps out of consideration for expanding exposure, Du Xiaoman chose to sponsor two programs with different styles, but the complexity of the program's audience composition did bring opportunities for the brand to break out of the circle. Through these two programs, Du Xiaoman actually completed a wide-ranging brand exposure, deeply penetrated the fans' eyes, and also conveyed its brand value to more circles.

6. The live broadcast room turned into a "ball viewing platform", and Sister Xi's fried skewers sold goods with a sense of immersion

In fact, if brands want to participate in the marketing of large-scale sports events such as the World Cup, the entry threshold is often too high and requires a lot of resources. But this time we see that not only large companies are doing World Cup marketing, but many small and medium-sized enterprises have also begun to participate in such an event marketing, such as Xijie Fried Skewers.

During this World Cup, Douyin Life Service launched the theme event "Heart-beating Season", uniting a group of high-quality merchants in the fields of catering, hotel and travel, providing small and medium-sized brands with World Cup marketing tickets that match their own positioning, and promoting a win-win situation for World Cup marketing, merchant performance and urban services through short videos, live broadcasts, etc. As a catering brand participating in the Heart-beating Season event, Xijie Fried String Casserole focused its participation in the World Cup event on "building a live broadcast room" and "live broadcast product portfolio".

We can see that Xijie Zhachuan has transformed the live broadcast room into a "watching platform" full of playful elements, such as imitating the live broadcast theme of the World Cup by sound and decorating the live broadcast room with World Cup elements.

Specifically, the theme of the live broadcast is "Let's watch the Xijie Cup together", and the homophonic pun sets the tone for the whole live broadcast process. The live broadcast room uses red tones with a green field background design, and the anchor who brings goods changes his clothes to become a commentator. While fitting the topic of the World Cup, the clever design of the live broadcast room also has the potential to attract users to watch and stay.

Xijie Fried Strings puts users into the atmosphere of the World Cup by setting up the live broadcast room. After all, with countless live broadcasts competing for users' attention, whoever can achieve "what you see is what you get" in the live broadcast room setting and reduce users' cognitive and decision-making costs will be able to stand out in details. Just like Xijie Fried Strings turned the live broadcast room into a viewing platform and the anchor into a commentator, the simple change in the live broadcast room setting made the brand one step faster in attracting fans.

The eye-catching form alone is not enough. Xijie Fried Chuan also put a lot of effort into the package configuration sold in the live broadcast room, launching a heart-moving season joint group purchase package that includes popular products and new products in the store. The products in the live broadcast room adopt matrix pricing, with discounts ranging from 38% to 20%. A variety of discounted viewing theme packages have greatly promoted the increase in group purchase sales.

In addition to using fun live broadcast rooms to attract users to stay and discounted packages to arouse their desire to buy, Xijie Fried skewers also did not fall behind in attracting traffic to the live broadcast room. Xijie Fried skewers linked the resources of the Douyin life service platform, combined with live broadcast product specials and opening screens to bring sufficient traffic to the brand live broadcast room. In addition, after cooperating with the huge engine to promote product traffic locally, Xijie Fried skewers also achieved a gratifying result of leveraging over 10 million GMV with an investment of 500,000, and was on the weekly list of the TOP20 hot-selling brands in the catering industry in the "Heart-beating Viewing Season".

It can be seen that in the Douyin platform's "Watch the Season" theme event, insight into the needs and scenarios of the majority of users during the World Cup viewing period has become the key factor in the success of Xijie Fried skewers. In addition, the lively and playful live broadcast room created by Xijie Fried skewers has also strengthened users' impression and memory of the brand.

7. Watching football requires snacks, and Li Shang Huang promotes scene marketing

If snack brands want to gain a foothold in the World Cup marketing arena, it is often a good idea to attack consumers from the side. Considering the consumption and eating scenarios of snacks such as chestnuts, Li Shang Huang chose to combine the recreational atmosphere of snacks with the World Cup viewing scene.

In order to highlight the connection between the World Cup viewing scene and snacks, Li Shanghuang specially launched the "Li" set meal, which is made up of the peak season's main products chestnuts and hawthorns. It uses homophonic gameplay to point out the World Cup attributes of the snack set and can quickly gain product influence among young people.

At the same time, the extremely cost-effective price and the large number of potential user groups paying attention to the World Cup make the Hawthorn to "Li" package have the potential to become a hot-selling item.

The exposure of a large number of influencer promotion videos has further boosted the popularity of Li Shang Huang's marketing. By building a network of more than 2,000 influencers above Lv3 nationwide, the promotion videos of influencers were able to bring a lot of exposure and popularity to group products and brands in early November, and also brought real customer traffic to offline stores. In addition, the popularity brought by the massive short video marketing further improved transaction conversion through live broadcasting, with the highest order volume of packages reaching 600,000 and the total order volume reaching 1.63 million.

After analyzing the marketing actions of Li Shang Huang during the World Cup, it can be seen that Li Shang Huang deeply linked the snack-eating scene with the World Cup viewing scene by launching the "Li" set meal with seasonal hawthorns, which gave users the mental perception that they should eat snacks while watching the game. While grasping the atmosphere of watching the World Cup, it also reaped victory in the scene marketing strategy.

8. Conclusion

Although this year's World Cup has come to an end, the various marketing activities carried out by brands around the World Cup are obviously very popular. With the increasing size of the fan base in my country and the growing domestic sports atmosphere, brands will inevitably show a competitive posture of increasing competition in the future sports event marketing battlefield.

When looking overseas, many young people have already started playing with new-generation technologies such as VR and holograms, which seems to indicate that with the popularization of new technologies, consumer groups will put forward more requirements and challenges to brand marketing due to continuous technological innovation.

After all, only brand marketing that is constantly innovating and changing can firmly grasp the attention of consumers who "love the new and dislike the old". From this perspective, the brand's insight into user needs and the differentiated solutions provided by the huge engine to different brands may be the key to these brands winning the World Cup. When the continuous innovation of brand marketing activities brings users a light and interesting gameplay experience, brands that can constantly come up with new tricks can be invincible in future sports marketing and even more marketing scenarios.

Author: Morketing

WeChat public account: Morketing (ID: Morketing)