The leading sports franchises have cracked it. Social media is one of the most effective platforms for digital marketers and the sports industry have found many ways to reach increase their brand image and reach potential customers.

Here are five of the most inventive and successful social media campaigns conducted in the last few years by sports franchises and why they worked so well.

Nike: #DareToZlatan

Campaign: Nike Teamed up with football player Zlatan Ibrahimovic, a player best known for his charisma and confidence and started a fun twitter and YouTube campaign.

It all started with Zlatan tweeting this, introducing us all to #DareToZlatan

Source: Twitter

Following that, Nike put up these fun videos on their YouTube that include Zlatan winning a penalty against a tiger.

Then started answering his fans questions.

Source: Twitter

The result: This led to Zlatan getting over 60,000 tweets on his main tweets and #DareToZlatan trended worldwide.

Why it worked: Although production and Zlatan’s involvement were inevitably expensive. Nike are using this campaign amongst others to create what Hoffman and Novak (2010) call a social brand, adding to their overarching social business strategy which involves collaborating with others to create a social environment that all stakeholders but particularly customers can benefit from. Emphasising social interaction as a core competency and creating authentic relationships with customers that both Nike and their customers can benefit from.

Adidas: Tango Squads

Campaign: Adidas has reached out to 100 – 250 teenagers between 16 – 19 in 15 key cities worldwide to create their “Tango Squads”. These individuals are all particularly active on social media and by Adidas sending them exclusive products and content prior to release, they are getting them to share this information with their huge followings

Source: Adidas

The result: Adidas created a fresh marketing stream that took advantage of the changing social media scene.

Why it worked: Adidas took advantage of a new marketing stream called the “dark social”, which is the essentially the discovery that a large amount of referral traffic is from individuals sharing websites and products to their friends, ahead of online advertisements and online sharing. This is underpinned by a study by Neilson (2012) who suggest that 90% of consumers trust peer recommendations, compared to the 33% who trust ads. Adidas’ strategy is different from the classic influencer/brand relationship as is dependent on long run relationship, where Adidas are supplying these influencers with agents who help them share products and information. Adidas have been success in steering away from the saturated online advertisement scene and into a more personal means of sharing information.

Reebok: #ToughisBeautiful

Campaign: This was a campaign to market Reebok’s new branch of the organisation “Reebok Women”. The idea was to inspire women that don’t associate with the new fitness craze and make the fitness scene more assessible. Using Instagram as its main platform it showed women of all ages actively working out, and conveyed information on upcoming fitness events. The campaign got support from a multitude of sporting ambassadors that are attempting to empower their audience.

Source: Instagram

The result: The Reebok women Instagram has 312 thousand followers, although this is significantly less than some of its competitors, growth since this campaign has been significant.

Why it worked: This was an example of blue ocean marketing (Kim and Mauborgne, 2004), Reebok is using social media to try and attract a whole new audience for the industry. They are using a positive sentiment to make the brand look welcoming and progressive.

Where Reebok differentiates itself, is by not always showing classically beautiful fitness models, which goes against what is usually successful on Instagram. It is clear they have tried to create a balance but some of the photos have not gone down well, regardless of how empowering the women is

Final Words

Hopefully this has inspired someone who is currently trying to market a company on social media. Unfortunately, there is a key trend with these examples, that being they all required considerable time and funding. However, here are some ways you can still be successful on a smaller budget.

References

Hoffman, G. and Novak, W. (2000) The Social Media Bible: Tactics, Tools & Strategies for Business Success.

Neilson (2012) Global consumer trust. [online] < http://www.nielsen.com/us/en/press-room/2012/nielsen-global-consumers-trust-in-earned-advertising-grows.html> [accessed 17 April 2017]

Kim, C.W. and Mauborgne, R (2004) Blue Ocean Strategy. Harvard Business School Press: Boston