Orange brand scores well @ European footie

Rating: Precise finds its app proved popular

The efficacy of jumping onto the social media bandwagon can be measured as Precise‘s Brand Insights team is doing by listening to the voice of consumers as expressed on social media. The objective is to help businesses/brands make better, more informed decisions. Precise’s recent research has been around how brands can tap into the power of sport sponsorship. It has discovered that network operator, Orange experienced the third highest number of mentions in relation to UEFA Euro 2012 during the group stage. Use of its UEFA Euro 2012 app generated many of these mentions, indicating the app was popular. However, the app did not drive as much in the way of user-generated opinions, Precise says.Interestingly, despite the growth of social media since 2010, sponsors of UEFA EURO 2012 drove a lower volume of conversations than the sponsors of the 2010 FIFA World Cup

During the footie matches, Adidas took a 29 per cent share of daily English-language conversations on social media about the sponsors.

In second place was McDonald’s with 17 per cent just ahead of Orange with 15 per cent. But Orange beat Carlsberg with 12 per cent and, impressively, Coca Cola with10 per cent.

Precise says that although Euro 2012 sponsors allegedly ramped up their social media activity around the tournament, digital activations and apps generally failed to score big in producing active discussion about their brands.

According to the research, traditional offline sponsorship is still driving the lion’s share of conversations.

That’s weird because according to Twitter, the average number of daily tweets increased from 50 million back in March 2010 to 340 million by March 2012.

James Withey, head of Brand Insight with Precise, observed, “Social media use has exploded over the last two years, but that doesn’t necessarily mean people will discuss sponsor activities in ever-greater volumes.

He continued,”So the question is – how do sponsors get people talking about what they are doing?

The success of those brands with a strong focus on using offline activities to get people talking about them online, suggests that sponsors would benefit from better coordinating their offline and online marketing activities.”

Precise’s research methodology does, however, demonstrate how social media can be monitored to gauge real brand insights.