Three pictures to explain content marketing in the World Cup

This article analyzes the specific content marketing strategies during the World Cup on the TikTok platform from the perspective of changes in content consumption, changes in content consumption behavior, and changes in content marketing. It is recommended for people who want to learn more about content marketing.

TikTok has won the broadcasting rights for the Qatar World Cup, bringing the World Cup into the vertical screen era. Today, I will use three pictures to tell you how to do content marketing during the World Cup after TikTok joins the game.

1. Changes in content consumption: from heavy to light

If you want to do a good job in event marketing, you should not immerse yourself in the complex commercial resource packages of the media. We should first understand how users "consume" the World Cup. Only by fully understanding the user's content consumption logic can we make the right content marketing strategy. Let's first divide the content derived from the World Cup into layers:

• The event itself: live broadcast, highlights, and derivative programs of the event;
• Score win or lose: predict the score win or lose and guess the champion before, during and after the game;
• Star news: star stories, star game performance, star gossip.
• Event gossip: Qatar's little prince emoticon pack, "Lone Warrior" played at the World Cup semi-final.

The breadth of traffic is from low to high, while the precision of traffic is from high to low, including the event itself, the score, the news about the star players, and the gossip about the event. Let me give you an example, and you will understand the reason. For example, do you remember the score of the match between the host Qatar and Ecuador? You may not remember the score, but I think you should remember that the little prince of Qatar became an emoticon in a hurry. Only true football fans know the score of every game in the World Cup. And only a small number of people who "consume" the World Cup are watching the games, and most of them are just watching the excitement.

There are definitely more fake fans who watch the fun than real fans who watch the games seriously. And everyone is watching this year's World Cup on TikTok. The short, flat and fast short videos have drawn more "fake fans who watch the fun" into the consumption of the World Cup. People who watch the fun don't like to watch "Croatia's counter-attack tactics" but gossip such as "Cristiano Ronaldo actually has his own private jet."

Therefore, the mainstream content consumption of the World Cup is changing from "heavy" to "light". The closer the content is to the "event itself", the heavier it is; the closer the content is to the "event gossip", the lighter it is. For brands, if you want to win traffic from the World Cup, you can't just focus on the World Cup itself, you have to see all possible traffic in the World Cup. For event marketing, you have to aim at the content you pursue for the marketing effect. Generally speaking, the marketing goals of brands in the World Cup can be roughly divided into four categories:

1. Winning over the straight minds of sports men – the event itself;
2. Want to interact with users - win or lose scores;
3. Marketing through star spokespersons - star news;
4. It only needs to take on large traffic - event lace;

The traffic generated by the event itself almost all comes from straight men who are obsessed with sports. Therefore, the marketing of customers in categories such as automobiles, games, and electronics should focus on the event itself, and can choose Douyin's live broadcasts, event highlights, World Cup reports, derivative variety shows and other resources. For example, during the World Cup, Future Football Mobile Games cooperated with "Know the Ball Conference" and FAW-Volkswagen cooperated with "Huang Jianxiang Talks", which are all ball commentary programs that only senior fans will follow.

Some international brands often sign well-known football stars as spokespeople, or sign short-term endorsements with some football stars during the World Cup, so that they can use the influence of the spokespeople to achieve a creative breakthrough. During this year's World Cup, LV invited the famous photographer Annie Leibovitz to take a photo of Messi and Ronaldo in the same frame. This photo was once popular on WeChat Moments.

But getting big-name stars is only an exclusive game for super stars. If small and medium-sized players do not have such a high budget, they can use Douyin's star micro-endorsement products to select one or two stars to help you make customized challenges or customized short videos for the stars. If your customer base is relatively broad, such as e-commerce platforms, takeaways, beverages, and water customers. You are not pursuing precise traffic in the World Cup, you just need to take on high-heat traffic.

Targeting those events can actually tap into huge traffic. For example, Meituan sponsored the Ghanaian team in this year's World Cup and asked the Ghanaian players to train in clothing in the style of Meituan's delivery boys, creating a news story about "Ghanaian jerseys collide with delivery boys' jerseys." Then, Meituan bought two hot products on Douyin - the hot list and hot product specials - to take over the traffic brought by this hot topic. On that day, the number of people searching for Meituan increased by 60%.

To sum up: content consumption during the World Cup is changing from heavy to light. To fully utilize the traffic of the World Cup, brands cannot just focus on the "heavy" content, but must understand all the content traffic in the World Cup and anchor different types of content for marketing based on their own marketing goals.

2. Changes in content consumption behavior: from asynchronous to synchronous

"At 2:58 in the morning, you opened TikTok in advance and cast the live broadcast signal to the TV. The game was very close, and you were starving. You saw the live broadcast of the nearby barbecue restaurant, so you bought a World Cup meal for two. At halftime, there was finally a goal! You jumped up and cheered, then suppressed your restless heart and grabbed a wave of goal red envelopes. You felt that your favorite team was "stable", so you went to the World Cup home stadium and played a "prize prediction". What you didn't know was: your girlfriend secretly recorded your dancing image and posted it on TikTok..."

In fact, there are four main consumer behaviors during the World Cup: watching, playing, commenting, and buying. But in the era of big screens, these behaviors are asynchronous. On TikTok, these behaviors are synchronous. That is, people will watch and play, watch and comment, and watch and buy.

Based on the behavioral characteristics of users, the platforms designed their commercial products and marketing methods. If we want to do a good job in World Cup content marketing, we must first understand their underlying principles.

1. Watch and Play: Learn to Create “Variable Rewards”

During this year's World Cup, I saw many people playing games such as "guess the champion and share the prize money" and "prediction with prizes". In fact, even if you guess right every time, you won't make a fortune, but everyone still enjoys it. The reason behind this is that "variable rewards" are at work. When people are not sure how much reward they will get, they will act more frantically. During World War II, psychologist Skinner conducted an experiment. He put a group of pigeons into a box with a joystick.

At first, the pigeons only needed to peck at the lever to get food. Later, Skinner changed the rules of the game. When the pigeons pecked at the lever, sometimes they got food, and sometimes they didn't. Skinner found that the pigeons soon got bored of pecking at the lever to get food. When the pigeons were unsure whether they would get food, they became very enthusiastic. Humans and pigeons behave in the same way. When we are unsure whether we can guess the score, we actually enjoy it.

In view of the user's mentality of "watching and playing", we must learn to use red envelope ads, guessing ads, and award ads to stimulate the "variable reward" effect. For example, Aion Sports Car made an "interactive direct-out" advertisement during the World Cup. Users can receive a 5-10 yuan red envelope by completing game tasks according to the prompts. Since the final amount is uncertain, many people are willing to "gamble a little". Under the stimulation of variable rewards, their Douyin gained 86,000 followers in five days.

2. Review while watching: Users are creatively “reviewing”

In the past, our participation in the World Cup was superficial. For example, we complained about the referee's decision and praised Messi's footwork in the circle of friends. But when short videos collided with the World Cup, users' participation in the World Cup became creative. When Ronaldo walked off the pitch with tears in his eyes, fans used online materials to make a documentary about Ronaldo's previous World Cup journeys and posted it on Douyin. Isn't this fan making a comment?

But his comment is not a few lines of text, but a work of art; a girl who stayed up late to watch the game with her boyfriend posted a video with World Cup special effects stickers, isn't she expressing her love for the World Cup? From superficial "commenting" to creative "commenting" is one of the trends in World Cup consumption. Whether it is the World Cup broadcasting platform or the client who wants to use the event for marketing, they should try their best to let users "comment" creatively and participate more deeply.

Because the more users participate, the more they will like you. Most of the furniture sold by IKEA needs to be assembled by users themselves. Psychologists have studied these furniture and found that it is the people who assemble the furniture who invest their time and energy that think these furniture are more beautiful. Similarly, if you want to get more traffic during the World Cup, it is often not enough to just buy a bunch of VVs. If you can get target users involved, they will favor your brand more.

For example, Adidas held a "Football is still so good" challenge on Douyin. Users who posted videos together to become the atmosphere group of the World Cup could share the brand bonus. Although the format was simple, many netizens spontaneously participated in this event. Therefore, brands that want to win the hearts of users can pay more attention to Douyin's participatory product gameplay such as red envelopes, challenges, special effect stickers, etc.

3. Buy while you see: Create a “buy now” atmosphere

The World Cup is a carnival atmosphere. In this atmosphere, dopamine and adrenaline in the human body soar, but this "enthusiasm" is a bit like a roller coaster, which goes up quickly and falls back quickly. If a brand wants to bring goods during the World Cup, you must create an atmosphere of immediate purchase so that conversion can happen immediately. During the World Cup, Mengniu chose two advertising products - "Must-see" and "Shake Easter Egg".

If a user browses content related to the World Cup, the system will automatically determine that he is interested in the World Cup. Within 30 minutes, Mengniu's advertisement will appear in front of him. In order to facilitate quick conversion, users can enter Mengniu's promotion page by shaking their phones. Compared with other advertisements in the same period, the cost of planting grass for this type of advertisement is 74% lower.

To sum up: the changes in World Cup content consumption reflect the changes in World Cup consumption behavior. The current World Cup content consumption behavior is characterized by watching and playing, watching and commenting, and watching and buying. Only by understanding the principles behind the platform's commercial products and marketing methods can we do a good job in event marketing.

3. Changes in content marketing: from traffic buyout to full-link penetration

The marketing methods of major events such as the World Cup, the Olympics, and the Winter Olympics have gone through three stages.

1. In the 1.0 era, it was called "traffic buyout". Major customers monopolized the traffic of the World Cup by sponsoring the live broadcast of the World Cup, including the advertisements in the middle of the broadcast. This method can achieve explosive results in a short period of time, but it often only has exposure but no conversion. Moreover, it is not possible without money, and the threshold is too high.
2. In the 2.0 era, it is called "brand leveraging". Some brands have great creativity. They combine the concept conveyed by the brand with the hot spots of the World Cup. Enterprises use small costs to leverage large traffic. This marketing method does not cost too much money, but the popularity of creativity depends on intelligence for 30% and destiny for 70%, and the uncertainty is too high.
3. The 3.0 era is called "link penetration". Due to the maturity of big data and intelligent recommendation, World Cup advertising has opened up the link of watching, reviewing, playing and buying. Advertising not only drives brand effect, but also brings business conversion.

In my opinion, there are five key links in the marketing chain during the World Cup, and each link has corresponding commercial products to choose from:

1. Crowd water storage (experts planting grass)
2. Crowd interception (search product, World Cup mall advertising)
3. Deepening of relationships (guessing interactions, challenge games, national tasks)
4. Lead conversion (live streaming)
5. Secondary follow-up investment (information flow-optimal order)

Through the traffic layout of the five links, we can run through the entire chain and achieve business transformation. In the past, the World Cup was dominated by big brands. On the one hand, it was because the copyright of the World Cup was expensive and small brands could not afford it. On the other hand, it was because small brands did not have enough funds and could only pursue immediate results. The connection of the entire chain has given small brands the confidence to enter the market. Some small stores relied on local traffic during the World Cup and achieved gratifying results.

For example, during the World Cup, Xijie Zhachuan launched a special live broadcast called "Let's Watch the Xijie Cup Together", using the "Xijie Cup" homophonic pun to lead the rhythm. The entire live broadcast room was dressed up like a football live broadcast room. The anchors used the style of football commentators to promote the products, creating a sense of immersion in watching the game and quickly igniting users' desire to place orders.

Xijie Fried Skewers is just a small chain store that mainly sells fried skewers, but they relied on three special live broadcasts during the World Cup to break 10 million in GMV in three days. The company also mobilized internal employees, store members, and community fans to come to the live broadcast room to stock up. In addition, with the support of Dabo, seeding, and local traffic, their overall ROI reached 18!

To sum up: from traffic buyout to full-link penetration, the logic of World Cup content marketing has changed. Brands should not only focus on big rights and interests, but also pay attention to more "light" content. The traffic of these contents is fleeting. Only by stringing them together with marketing links can light content achieve "heavy" effects.

IV. Conclusion

If you want to do a good job in marketing for an event like the World Cup, you don’t have to start with brainstorming or coming up with a big idea, nor do you have to start with selecting media resources and rights. Instead, you have to first study user behavior and understand how users consume the World Cup. Only by understanding the changes in content consumption can you do a good job in content marketing.

Author: General Liang

Source: WeChat public account "General Liang (ID:liangjiangjunisme)"