World Cup marketing: platforms take advantage of the situation, brands play with memes

Why are platforms and brands rushing to plan World Cup marketing? Since the start of the tournament, what are the live broadcast and video playback data of the World Cup on Douyin and Migu? What new gameplay have major platforms and brands introduced? What are users' preferences for different World Cup content?

On November 21, the 2022 Qatar World Cup officially kicked off. In addition to Migu, Douyin Group became the broadcaster of the 2022 World Cup. According to Times Finance, Douyin Group spent more than 1 billion yuan to obtain the broadcasting rights. Douyin, Toutiao, Xigua Video, and even PICO and other products under Douyin Group have obtained the World Cup authorization.

Before the World Cup officially opened, Douyin had already launched a World Cup special page and even changed its App icon. In addition to the "basic operation" of live broadcasting of all matches, it also launched various interactive activities and derivative programs, making full preparations for this sports event.

In addition to Douyin, Bilibili has created topics such as "A Different Kind of Football" and "Actually, I'm a Fan Too" to encourage up-hosts to participate in the discussion and creation of World Cup-related content; Xiaohongshu has launched the "World Cup Review Conference" to build a community for chatting about the event; Zhihu has set up World Cup-related topics, allowing answerers to conduct analysis from relatively professional perspectives such as history and humanities... All major platforms seem to want to take advantage of the World Cup to gain traffic and commercialization.

Brands also did not miss out on the huge traffic entrance of the World Cup. Fancy memes, welfare activities, live broadcasts... a series of World Cup-themed marketing activities emerged one after another, staging a marketing "event" belonging to the brand.

1. The World Cup loves "Mi Dou", what are the data

Many labels such as "the most expensive World Cup in history", "Messi and Ronaldo's farewell match", "the first time held in the northern hemisphere in winter" have made the 2022 Qatar World Cup attract a lot of attention and brought huge traffic to related content.

According to Crawley data, as of November 15, Douyin's World Cup-related videos have been played more than 6.25 billion times, and the number of video shares has approached 13.4 million. According to Douyin's public data, the average number of viewers for the World Cup group matches in the past two weeks reached 70.62 million, with a cumulative number of interactions of 837 million times, more than 10 million people chatting while watching, and 100 million people participating in the prediction.

In order to fully tap into the high-quality content of the World Cup, Douyin invited many guests to participate in the event commentary. In addition to professional football commentary, celebrities from all walks of life such as Bai Yansong, Lu Han, Wu Dajing, Xu Xin, etc. chatted about football with the audience in the Douyin event live broadcast room. The celebrity effect also drove the traffic growth of many derivative columns such as "DOU Comes to the World Cup", "Understand Football Conference", and "Understand the World Cup in One Minute".

The picture shows a screenshot of the World Cup section of Douyin

In addition to video content, the World Cup has also brought new impetus to the commercial development of Douyin. According to data released by Douyin e-commerce, from November 17 to 23, the sales volume of jerseys on Douyin e-commerce increased by 513% year-on-year, and the sales volume of small speakers and table football machines increased by 298% and 197% year-on-year respectively.

During the World Cup, users can receive themed coupons issued by Douyin Life Services through Douyin World Cup event venues, merchant homepages, and product details pages. The official will use a combination of activities and discounts to attract user consumption and create an exclusive consumption scenario during the World Cup.

In the field of live streaming sales, as of November 20, there were more than 4,000 live broadcasts by experts on Douyin centered around the World Cup theme. According to Douyin's data, the total GMV of live broadcasts exceeded 60 million, and the GMV of a single broadcast by many well-known brands exceeded 3 million.

In addition to Douyin, Migu, as the official broadcasting platform of this World Cup, has brought a completely different way of playing around the World Cup. Different from previous World Cup live broadcasts, China Mobile Migu, with the support of China Mobile's 5G technology, has opened up a new viewing experience of the "Metaverse World Cup". According to the International Financial News, Migu has launched the first cloud-native social interactive viewing platform with the theme of the World Cup - "Star Plaza".

The platform integrates music, sports, culture, travel, games and technology, and has become the core entrance to Migu's "Star" metaverse. Users can log in to the Star Plaza with their own virtual avatars to experience the effect of watching the game in the metaverse.

The picture comes from Migu Sports official microblog

Migu has been making efforts in the field of sports and has gradually become a long video platform with relatively complete sports content development. In 2018, Migu became the new media cooperation broadcasting platform of CCTV and the Russian World Cup. Since then, it has won the broadcasting rights of the 2020 Tokyo Olympics, the 2020 European Cup, and the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics. The video content copyrights of the five major leagues, the Champions League, the Premier League, La Liga, Serie A, the Bundesliga, and the French Ligue 1 are all in the hands of Migu.

According to relevant media reports, Migu's expenditure on purchasing sports copyrights alone exceeded 10 billion, and the traffic brought by sports events has become an important driving force for Migu's development.

From the various gameplays that Douyin and China Mobile Migu have announced, it is not difficult to see that promoting user social interaction and improving user experience are the main directions of the two platforms. Migu needs the popularity of the event to bring user growth and the formation of user usage habits, so as to help itself seize more market share in the long video field. Douyin wants to focus on the sports vertical category, using the hot spots of the event to attract traffic to various sectors such as e-commerce, live broadcasting, and local life, and increase commercialization.

2. Taking advantage of the platform, major brands are all "revitalizing"

In addition to the official broadcasting platforms of the World Cup, major content platforms have also followed the popularity of the World Cup and launched their own World Cup theme activities. On the eve of the World Cup, Xiaohongshu officially announced the signing of two traditional strong teams, the Belgian National Men's Football Team and the Spanish National Men's Football Team. The brand element of Xiaohongshu that is known to the public, "red", is the main color of the jerseys of the two teams.

Football stars such as Zidane and Mourinho simultaneously posted notes on Xiaohongshu, officially announcing that they will chat about football with their fans on Xiaohongshu.

In addition, Xiaohongshu and Migu have cooperated to hold the "World Cup Commentary Conference", where users can bring topics to participate in the World Cup discussion, and high-quality notes have the opportunity to be displayed on Migu Live, meeting the interactive needs of the majority of fans. Welfare activities such as "Cheers to the World Cup, Xiaohong Team wins and gets free craft beer" have penetrated into the players' viewing scenes, adding to the platform's sense of companionship and fun.

Screenshot from Xiaohongshu

In order to facilitate users to watch World Cup related content, Bilibili opened two special "World Cup" portals to display all video works related to the World Cup. The platform launched a site-wide submission campaign for the World Cup. Since November, the number of submissions with the "World Cup" tag has exceeded 47,000, with a total playback volume of more than 957 million times. Inspired by official rewards, Bilibili has set off a wave of creation of World Cup content.

Not only the platforms, but also the marketing "war" between brands will become more intense during major sporting events. During the Qatar World Cup, major brands frequently used unique strategies to attract the attention of consumers.

During the World Cup, the luxury brand LV posted a photo on Weibo of Messi and Ronaldo playing chess on an LV bag. As football superstars, Messi and Ronaldo rarely appear in the same picture at the same time. This sudden collaboration brought a sense of surprise and freshness to the fans. As the popularity of the photo fermented, netizens with wild imaginations began to spontaneously create secondary works. LV cleverly implanted product information into the hot spots of the event, leveraging the secondary dissemination of fans with the star effect, bringing huge traffic to the brand.

The picture comes from LV official micro

If LV's marketing was intentional, then Mengniu's success was to some extent an accident. Mengniu spent $60 million to become the official global sponsor of the World Cup, hoping to gain international recognition through the popularity of the World Cup. However, in the first game, the Mengniu billboard in the stadium was hung upside down, which quickly caused heated discussions among netizens on social platforms. Some netizens said they would "ask Qatar to return the money", while others thought it was both a blunder and funny.

Mengniu accurately perceived the traffic and popularity brought by this event, and immediately posted a message on its official Weibo account saying "It's good to score a goal, it's great anyway", and attached a QR code with Mengniu's official World Cup applet, successfully accumulating private domain traffic. Subsequently, Mengniu launched a promotional activity in the official Douyin live broadcast room, "giving away 200 boxes of Chunzhen blueberries for every goal scored". With the dual effects of popularity and preferential subsidies, the brand's popularity has been comprehensively improved.

The picture comes from Mengniu official microblog

In a sense, a football match is not only a sports event, but also an emotional social interaction for fans. The emotions and feelings of football fans will be amplified to a certain extent during the World Cup. In the 2019 Champions League semi-finals, singer Su Xing smashed his own TV in a rage, and the related video is still being circulated and discussed. This year, JD Home Appliances seized the hot topic of smashing TVs and had a clever linkage with Su Xing.

During the World Cup, JD.com launched a campaign to exchange TVs for free and invited Su Xing to shoot a promotional video, which not only tapped into the inner emotions of fans through humor but also deeply tied the event to its own business. JD.com saw hot spots that matched the brand and updated old jokes at special time points. Starting from the audience's emotions, JD.com effectively narrowed the distance between the brand and consumers.

Screenshot from Weibo

The World Cup is not just a competition, but also a commercial chain that includes copyright competition, title sponsorship, product placement, and marketing. Sprite, Yili, Meituan Waimai, Hisense...both platforms and brands are taking advantage of the popularity of the World Cup to create content related to the viewing scene. With the joint efforts of multiple parties, a commercial landscape centered on sports events has gradually formed.

3. Traffic aggregation, long-term retention is the key

Today's World Cup marketing is no longer simply about promoting through hard advertising, but about inspiring resonance among the audience through sportsmanship and viewing emotions. In this process, traffic, scenes and social interaction have become the core keywords. For platforms that are planning marketing around the World Cup, clarifying brand positioning and propositions and exploring the highlights of their resources are important preparatory work.

In addition, brands need to find the best contact points between themselves and marketing resources and create their own iconic projects to differentiate themselves in marketing.

Sports fans have a strong interest in and stickiness to sports events, so leveraging sports events for marketing is a long-term process. For a globally watched event like the World Cup, it is difficult to impress consumers by simply taking advantage of hot topics. The marketing direction of platforms and brands should be to allow users to spontaneously participate in discussions about the event, using the World Cup as a traffic touchpoint to achieve the precipitation and retention of traffic.

The heat of the World Cup continues, and the final results of this marketing "test" that has attracted national attention have not yet been announced. When the craze for the event gradually subsides, the platforms and brands that achieve growth in the target group and ultimately achieve commercial growth will be the ultimate "winners."

What do you think about the World Cup layout of platforms and brands?

Author: Dake; Official Account: TopKlout