Empowering Brands to Leverage World Cup Trends on TikTok
Learn from Chelsie Hall how to leverage TikTok data to capture soccer fans during this FIFA World Cup.
As the FIFA World Cup approaches, brands from across the globe will be clamoring for audience attention and looking to snatch up some of the spend around the event. Chelsie Hall, CEO and co-founder, ViralMoment, shares insights on how brands can leverage TikTok data to capture the most engaged audience in the world — soccer fans — during the world’s biggest tournament.
The soccer World Cup is almost here. With FIFA starting in less than a week, we are getting ready for one of the biggest advertiser-powered events in existence. Period.
During this high-profile global event, it will be essential for brands to break through the noise and acquire new audiences. Utilizing AI tools and data dashboards will allow marketers to uncover the latest trends and give brands actionable insights into what is happening with their content (and other people’s content) on TikTok. Already, FIFA World Cup-related content had over 187 million views before the event even started, according to TikTok, and making sense of it is crucial to the success of marketing campaigns.
TikTok — A Vital Platform for FIFA World Cup Content
Fans and brands are making absolutely massive amounts of content around the World Cup. Different content elements go viral. For instance, the 2010 World Cup song became a massive hit, and the 2018 World Cup led to over 7.5 billion social engagements on FIFA’s platform alone.
While TikTok was still relatively new in the United States and many other global markets in 2018, it is now one of the world’s most-used social media platforms. TikTok is often the first stop for both users creating short, viral bites around the World Cup and for brands that want to reach them. Twitter’s current troubles only add to TikTok’s draw as a primary venue for fans creating original FIFA-related content.
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Tracking World Cup-related Activities on TikTok Offers Advantages
TikTok will be one of the main ways brands can see what fans think of the World Cup. But it is necessary for brands to utilize technology to keep a pulse on what is happening and track the sights, sounds, and massive moments of FIFA as they work their way through TikTok and culture. Too much data is being left out of these conversations, with 90% of brand impressions actually coming from in-video analysis. In fact, the brands with the most impressions in video are not necessarily the same as those with the most impressions based on metadata alone.
It is also important to remember that the 2022 World Cup will be the first major global post-COVID sporting event. The 2020 Olympics had a historically low viewership, but metrics on views and engagement for Olympic-related content on TikTok were underquantified. By contrast, we can make much more sense of eyeballs and screen time for FIFA-related content on TikTok. Viewers who would be consuming World Cup content on television are instead consuming it on their phones and especially on TikTok. The brands that understand what viewers are watching are the brands that will have the biggest advantage.
We are already keeping our eyes on some of the World Cup power players.
On the music front, longtime FIFA sponsor Hyundai is featuring BTS’ new song ‘Yet to Come,’ and their new campaign features a fresh TikTok-focused challenge with a shoulder-to-shoulder dance move practically designed for fan videos. Coca-Cola is centering its campaign around a multicultural mashup of the Queen classic ‘A Kind of Magic.’
Smartphone firm Vivo, a World Cup sponsor, also launched a high-profile new campaign that challenges fans to create user-generated content. The “Give It A Shot” challenge rewards fans who create high-performing social content with free phones and FIFA memorabilia.
Credit card giant Visa is also embarking on a large World Cup campaign, with details that will be released shortly.
However, the assured front-runner for World Cup TikTok advertising so far is Adidas. Given the recent exponential increase in news coverage around them due to the fallout from their Kanye West partnership, it is unsurprising how coverage around them has grown on TikTok. As of November 3rd, ViralMoment, a TikTok analytics firm, found over 94 million in-video mentions and 53 million mentions in captions and hashtags related to the World Cup. Adidas was the #1 trending topic at that time, dominating 26.28% of the conversation.
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Adidas has also made an intelligent strategic move related to FIFA. In partnership with the Royal Belgian Football Association and the popular music festival Tomorrowland, Adidas and Tomorrowland released cobranded clothing for the Belgian national team, which has attracted significant social coverage so far.
In addition, we are expecting several specific trends to come out of the World Cup on TikTok. We are particularly focused on fan content around favorite soccer players and the no doubt soon-to-be-iconic sports moments that will come out of upcoming games. We are also expecting a slice of life/travel videos from Qatar to be particularly successful. The same holds good for tributes to national teams.
Go Beyond Hashtags to Gain Advantage
For marketers, in particular, there are several questions the initial days of the World Cup will answer. They will be closely watching which players inspire the most content and which branded content efforts inspire the most reaction videos. It is still unclear which sounds will be used most for the video content and how regional content will play in different languages. However, accessing data that digs beyond just hashtags will give brands an unprecedented peek into how FIFA content will be consumed and give them a head start on how to leverage it for their audiences.
How do you plan to capture soccer fans on various social platforms during this World Cup? Let us know on Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn.
Image Source: FIFA
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