The World Cup was an unprecedented success, in terms of its organisation and the tremendous goodwill it caused amongst locals as well as international soccer fans. In addition, and having a longer lasting effect, is that the above-the-line media as well as social media impact of the World Cup set new records for this event, not just for South Africa, but for the soccer body FIFA too.
* 3,2 million soccer fans attended the 32 matches around the country, and about one third of the tickets were bought by about 350000 international visitors – the word-of-mouth feedback to their friends and family is the most credible marketing South Africa could wish for, and is free-of-charge!
* Highest TV coverage ever was achieved, and reached an unprecedented 700 million viewers for the Final alone
* The online coverage was the most dramatic, because much of it was a new way of communicating to soccer fans and about the World Cup, reports the Weekend Argus:
+ BBC News online ran 120 stories, and the Washington Post 48 stories during the World Cup, both being influential online newspaper services
+ The FIFA.com website had 150 million unique visitors during the World Cup, three times as many as in 2006.
+ South Africa’s unique identity, personality and character was woven into the soccer reporting by the international online media, and so the country’s ability to manage the tournament, and our unique vuvuzela and makarapa became world terms on blog posts, Twitter, comments to blog posts and online articles, and on Facebook.
+ The value of the online coverage was just short of R30 million, based on 148 million persons communicating about South Africa in the context of the World Cup online, calculated by BrandsEye, a local online agency. This value was created by soccer fans and the media for free, and did not cost South African Tourism a cent in coverage!
+ Just more than half of the mentions (58%) about the country came from the USA, a surprisingly small 10% from the UK, and only 8% from South Africa.
+ The mentions were analysed in terms of degree of positivity, and 55% were “strongly positive”, 40% were factual or neutral in terms of content, and 5% were negative.
+ Twitter played an important role in spreading the word about South Africa, not only via celebrity (e.g. Paris Hilton has more than 2 million followers) and soccer star Tweets, but also Twitter accounts with huge numbers of followers (e.g. Sports Illustrated, with close to 285000 followers).
In June traffic to the Whale Cottage website almost trebled to 129000 unique visitors, due to the World Cup, but also due to the engagement of Prince Albert and Charlene Wittstock, as the blog contains a post about the couple attending a New Year’s party in Fresnaye 18 months ago.
It has also been reported that the great World Cup coverage for South Africa has raised the bar for the marketing of Brazil. The 2014 World Cup host country has started its marketing already, by launching an international marketing campaign four years ahead of its tournament, a first in the history of the FIFA World Cup, says Dr Niklaus Eberl, an internal branding consultant for the German and South African World Cups (no doubt for Brazil to come too!).
In Business Day Dr Eberl was reported as saying the the Brazilian tourism agency Ambratur has launched an ambitious marketing strategy, which plans to double the number of tourists to Brazil (to 10 million per year, the same target as that of South Africa) and treble the value of tourism in the next ten years. The “Brazil is calling you” campaign aims to reach 400 million consumers in 100 countries, with a budget of $30 million this year alone. Brazil’s President Lula da Silva said: “The success of our African brothers represents a tremendous challenge to the Brazilian people. We are learning from them to ensure that we will present a World Cup as beautiful as 2010”. The Brazilian marketing budget is said to make that of South Africa look like “small change”! Brazil is planning to spend five times the R30 billion of South Africa on its infrastructure. The country also wants to equal or better South Africa’s 90 % score from FIFA for its handling of the World Cup.
Chris von Ulmenstein, Whale Cottage Portfolio: www.whalecottage.com
