The World Cup Marketing "Derbies"

 When Cristiano Ronaldo, part of Nike’s World Cup push, tweeted Nike’s second World Cup ad,

  released on its YouTube page, it caused a surge in views that topped 70m in days.

Adidas sponsors the event, and they feel Nike’s pressure and they are pretty well aware of their ambush campaigns. Consequently, they set up a temporary command center in Rio de Janeiro.

During the World Cup's one-month duration, social, digital, PR, marketing and event managers from the United States, UK, Brazil, Argentina, Germany, Spain, Italy, France, China and other countries will all run operations from the temporary “headquarters”.

Moreover, Adidas setting up media “newsrooms” in five cities including Shanghai and Moscow, with copywriters, filmmakers and photographers ready to post photos and video clips. At the same time, Nike is deploying more than 250 people in the U.S. China, Brazil, and elsewhere to feed social media.

This is just one of the “derbies” going on through out the world cup in Brazil. Some brands are going head-to-head in their digital marketing campaigns, like many have done for previous sporting events. For example, the most buzzed about beer brand at this year’s Super Bowl wasn’t top sponsor Anheuser-Busch, but rather party crasher Newcastle. Along with agency Droga5, the beer brand chose to focus on the digital impact of the event rather than the actual game itself and brand awareness grew by 5%.

108 million people watched the Super Bowl this year. That’s 607 million less than the World Cup finals alone in 2010. A properly executed ambush could have a huge impact during this tournament and brands like Volkswagen and Nike are preparing to do just that.

•   Adidas vs. Nike: Adidas might have been the official clothing outfitter of the 2010 tournament, but Nike was the dominant brand on social media. With twice as much social conversation, Nike enjoyed a buzz that was both disruptive to its competitor’s investment and instrumental in driving brand awareness in the global soccer market. After such success though, Nike is forced to go mainstream and compete in all channels with Adidas. That is why they launched a series of heavy artillery on all media channels, especially as Nike is the sponsor of home team Brazil.

•   Hyundai-Kia vs. Volkswagen: Serving as FIFA’s automotive sponsor since 2002, Hyundai and its Korean sibling Kia have locked up World Cup auto rights through 2022. And that’s fine by Volkswagen. The global automaker is looking to shake things up using a heavy digital and social plan to get its GTI model in front of the younger male Hispanic consumers watching.

Here are some of the very interesting brand battles going on during the world cup:

OFFICIAL SPONSOR	AMBUSH BRAND
COCA-COLA	PEPSI
ADIDAS	NIKE
HYUNDAI-KIA	VOLKSWAGEN
MCDONALD’S	BURGER KING
BUDWEISER	KEINEKEN

Sources: Bloomberg, mashable.com,