Some kind of history was made on Friday the 19th of August. It was the opening game of the FA cup, (follow the link if you're unfamiliar), a match between Ascot United and Wembley. For those who are interested, Wembley won the game 2-1. These teams might not say much to many people which is not surprising since both are far from competing in the Premier League (main league in England) and if you're not a football fanatic you might never come across these teams. That is not important. However, what makes the game remarkable was that it was the first game ever shown live on Facebook! Not only the first football game but the FIRST sports game EVER! The home stadium of Ascot had nearly 1,200 people watching the game. There were 30,000 people watching the match through Facebook. The figure is not as big as it could be but again, it's the first one ever shown on Facebook and many people are not that familiar or interested with these teams. 30,000 is still a huge audience.
What makes this more interesting is that it was shown on Budweiser UK's fan page. It also created a lot of discussion on the topic on their page. Budweiser is the official sponsor of the FA cup and for them, the aim is to bring the game closer to the fans. This will also create a lot of publicity for them and attract traffic to their fan page.
Here's a really cool football ad from them as well
I think this was a great move from them. Even though there were 'only' 30,000 viewers for the match, imagine how many might watch the FA cup final for example? I know I definitely would!!! Furthermore, they might even attract more users for Facebook just because you can see the game for free and we all know how crazy people are in Europe when it comes to football...
Would you become a fan of a page in order to watch sport for free?
Tuesday, 23 August 2011
Tuesday, 16 August 2011
Consumers demanding through social media and brands responding
Monitoring social media can be very valuable for brands. On Facebook, there are many groups that are titled 'Bring H&M to Australia'. For those who are not familiar with the brand here a link to their website http://www.hm.com/entrance.ahtml?orguri=/ . H&M is a Swedish 'affordable fashion brand'. After doing a Google search I found so many blogs discussing about H&M and demanding it to Australia.
I had a look at one of the Facebook groups and it even had a copy of a response from someone who works at H&M thanking the creator for showing the interest towards the brand. Through monitoring social media companies can find these kind of consumer demands and address them accordingly. It has been in the news that H&M is planning to open retail stores in Australia soon. It would be interesting to find out whether these 'demands' had an effect on the decision to expand to Australia...
One way or the other, social media has provided great marketing for H&M from brand lovers. Should brands show their appreciation and reward people who do this?
I had a look at one of the Facebook groups and it even had a copy of a response from someone who works at H&M thanking the creator for showing the interest towards the brand. Through monitoring social media companies can find these kind of consumer demands and address them accordingly. It has been in the news that H&M is planning to open retail stores in Australia soon. It would be interesting to find out whether these 'demands' had an effect on the decision to expand to Australia...
One way or the other, social media has provided great marketing for H&M from brand lovers. Should brands show their appreciation and reward people who do this?
Wednesday, 3 August 2011
Branding in Social Media
Having studied marketing and coming across so many case studies of how brands have fiercely competed against one another with ads that have been trying to make the rival brand seem secondary, it is quite interesting to see how branding is seen in social media. So many social media sites share links to other sites and even show the logo of their main competitor! A good example of this is Flickr. A website that is owned by Yahoo but displays the logo of Google on the homepage. In more traditional marketing, Coke and Pepsi have been showing each others brands in their campaigns quite cleverly but usually in a way that one of them is seen to be a superior one.Coke and Pepsi spent so much money in the past trying to prove why one is better than the other, now the aim seems to be to have fun with the brand. A great example is a 2011 advertising campaign by Pepsi
Almost similarly it looks like Yahoo has accepted that it is not worth it to try and change people from using Google. It is better to give people the freedom to use what they want because in the end, users have the power when it comes to social media.
If you go to YouTube and read the comments under this ad for Pepsi it's really fascinating to see how people have responded to the ad. This brings up the question whether marketers or the brands themselves have any power in social media anymore ? Or is it simply just better to stay back and let the users promote and protect your brand?
Almost similarly it looks like Yahoo has accepted that it is not worth it to try and change people from using Google. It is better to give people the freedom to use what they want because in the end, users have the power when it comes to social media.
If you go to YouTube and read the comments under this ad for Pepsi it's really fascinating to see how people have responded to the ad. This brings up the question whether marketers or the brands themselves have any power in social media anymore ? Or is it simply just better to stay back and let the users promote and protect your brand?
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