Category: Advertising & Marketing

Nike vs. Adidas World Cup Campaigns

Posted on by Taylor Kennedy

Isn’t it crazy to think the World Cup has only been playing for a week and three more weeks remain? Not only is this the month of crazy goals between countries, but it’s also a time for sporting goods manufacturers such as Nike and Adidas to compete. This time it’s about their marketing strategies.

Nike’s commercial, “The Last Game,” features animated avatars of World Cup pin-ups Cristiano Ronaldo and Neymar Jr., as part of its “Risk Everything” strategy.  The 5 1/2-minute video shows the Nike-signed players playing one last sudden-death match against the clones, who bore spectators by playing “like it’s just a job.”

Meanwhile, Adidas’ commercial features international stars David Beckham and Zinedine Zidane. In their “All in, or nothing” campaign, the duo challenge two individuals playing the FIFA World Cup video game to a real soccer match in their house. Another strategy Adidas is trying this year is shifting to YouTube and trying to introduce real-time marketing to the social platform.

Both campaigns are attempting to show how effectively channels such as video work well with e-commerce and social media. According to communications agency Way to Blue, Nike secured 200,119 social mentions between April 20-June 6 while Adidas grabbed 88,041.

How to organize a conference in 2014

Posted on by Brian Lee

Hosting a conference in today’s modern times can seem daunting, but with ample planning and attention to simple details, you can succeed in organizing, marketing and executing your event.

While your main form of promotion for the conference may be brochures, mailers and social media, consider creating a standalone website, which allows you to tailor the site to the event theme and thus strengthen branding. If it is a recurring event, keep the site active year round and post updates and news. A standalone event website can also increase your SEO, especially if you provide a banner or links to the event site on your main web page.

For registration, use an online registration tool such as Eventbrite, which provides easy ticket and event management. The built-in analytics allow you to track which promotional efforts are directing the most traffic to the registration site. For day-of registration, use a tool such as Square, which can be connected to any smartphone or tablet to take credit card payments. Have an attendee list ready, which can be provided by Eventbrite, and make name badges using Eventbrite’s name badge tool. Bring a label maker so you can print name tags on the spot for those who register at the door (and so they don’t have to use handwritten name tags).

One crucial aspect of both the promotion and execution stages of your conference is creating a hashtag to represent your conference – something easy to remember and type. This will allow attendees as well as people not at the conference to follow along and virtually connect with one another. It will also help your event to be searchable and visible on social media platforms, creating a simple way to share updates and track feedback and opinions on the conference. Throughout the conference, remind people through signage and slides to use the conference’s hashtag with their tweets, Facebook posts and other social media updates. Set up a scrolling screen to display tweets with the conference hashtag.

At the conference, make sure you have free (and fast!) Wi-Fi. Your Wi-Fi should be designed to accommodate the maximum device load at any given time; plan for each attendee to bring at least two devices (laptop and smartphone). With this number in mind, you may want to set up more than one network depending on the number of attendees. Think one high-quality network for every 150-200 attendees. You also need to make sure you have plenty of power strips – line them up at every table and have extras ready for the attendees who need to charge up their devices during sessions or workshops. This may seem like a small detail, but the convenience of charging will make a huge difference to attendees.

One final thing to keep in mind is a follow-up survey or evaluation. Platforms such as Survey Monkey allow users to easily set up and send out an email survey to lists or groups of people. Use these surveys to get feedback from your attendees on what they liked or didn’t like, what they learned and things they would change. Listening to feedback and implementing changes can add to your success for your next conference.

Twitter marketing during TV events

Posted on by Brian Lee

I feel bad for the people who have to manage the Twitter accounts of major brands during live events like the Super Bowl and the Oscars because it can’t be easy to stay on your toes for 3+ hours.

For example, you never know about the spontaneous things that happen, such as the safety during the first quarter of the Super Bowl or Ellen ordering pizza during the Oscars.

Here are my recommendations for tweeting during TV events:

  • Prepare tweets for every scenario. For example, “tweet XYZ if team 1 leads at halftime,” or “tweet XYZ if movie 3 wins best picture.”
  • Monitor trending tweets, hashtags and Twitter accounts relevant to the event (e.g. actors during the Oscars).
  • Like in crisis communications, create a list of everything else that could happen, from loss of power (2013 Super Bowl) to wardrobe malfunctions to flubbed lines to inadvertent product mentions, and then prepare tweets for them.
  • Have a small team accessible (e.g. same room, conference call, Skype, etc.) that can make quick decisions on what to tweet for everything else that happens.

Now here’s a list of some of the good and bad tweets during these recent TV events:

  • I wasn’t impressed with JCPenney’s tweeting with mittens stunt, in which the company purposely put out tweets with typos before revealing that it had been wearing mittens while typing. Sure it got people talking about the brand, but I’m anxious to see Q1 results if sales of mittens actually increased, because that’s the true measurement.
  • On a related note, congrats to Kia, Snickers and Doritos for tweeting back at JCPenney on the fly (e.g. Kia’s “Hey @jcpenney need a designated driver?”).
  • Ready for a shameless tweet? Try Papa John’s “Frozen wins, only at the movies. Our fresh, NEVER Frozen hand-tossed original crust pizza wins every time. #betteringredients.” I mean, really?
  • I liked Pizza Hut’s “Did someone say pizza? We got you” in response to Ellen wanting a pizza delivered.

Here’s my favorite tweet, although it did occur two days after the Oscars. This comes from @TheSimpsons, who wrote “.@TheEllenShow Oscar® Selfie: A wider view. #thesimpsons”