What time is it??
#FIFAtime.
As the countdown to FIFA kick-off draws near (only 17 days left!) brands have long started to get the ball rolling (heh). Some trend categories in particular have been emerging victorious as gametime draws near.
Don’t forget to grab the report so you’re ready to go…ooooaaaaaaalllllllllll!
While we wait, let’s take a look at some of the power players – and their strategies which helped boost them to dominate the fandom conversation.
Big music marketing energy.
Hyundai
In their collab with Korean boyband BTS, Hyundai released a song specific to their World Cup campaign. The music video for ‘Yet to Come’ features BTS and various fans in stadiums worldwide. Hyundai has been a longtime FIFA sponsor (with their partnership deal dating back to ’99) – and this year’s campaign features a fresh TikTok-focused challenge with a shoulder-to-shoulder dance move that calls out to unity.
Coca-Cola
For their World Cup sponsorship soundtrack, Coca Cola opted out of penning an original, and instead leans on some musical nostalgia. Featuring a multi-cultural mashup of Queen’s ‘A Kind of Magic’ from 1986 – the song will be the first time the global soundtrack features an up-and-coming talent from Saudi Arabia.
We’ve got our eyes on:
Vivo
Though the name is yet to emerge as a hot topic that’s achieved its #viralmoment, mobile-tech vivo – which has been named the official part phone of the World Cup – just launched a new campaign that challenges fans to create UGC. The challenge calls for creative posts taken on a vivo smartphone tagged with #vivogiveitashot and gives fans the chance to win a new phone and an official FIFA ball.
And the winner is…
Adidas
The assured front runner of the TikTok conversation has proven to be Adidas – which, given their recent trending boom and what’s lately feeling like an exponential increase in news coverage – makes a whole lot of sense. As of this morning, we’ve counted over 94M in-video mentions and 53M mentions in captions and hashtags related to the World Cup. Right now, the brand is the #1 trending topic, dominating 26.28% of the conversation.
That said, there has been a massive global push rolled out by the brand in anticipation of the soccer event – so our bet is that this also moves the needle on generating online buzz.
Like Coca-Cola and Hyundai, Adidas employs strategic music marketing – but with an interesting twist. In their rollout of ‘kits’ (aka uniform apparel collections for us non-soccer auteurs), the Belgium team’s swag officially marks the first shirt in World Cup history created in partnership with a music festival: Tomorrowland.
We can’t wait to see how they’ll look on the field…and how you’ll look sliding into our DM’s to get your data dashboard access in the link below ;)