Last week there were were five times as many searches for ‘vuvuzela’ than there were for ‘wayne rooney’, and Bavaria beer was the fifth most visited beer website following its marketing stunt proving the powerful pull the world’s game has on consumers.
Staggeringly, one in every 88 internet searches in the UK was World cup related last week.
The FIFA homepage is the biggest recipient of World Cup search traffic, and last week was the 71h most visited website in the UK, and the fourth most popular sports website.
Yes, sponsorship marketing works! So does ambush marketing it seems….but back to sponsorship and America’s favourite beer brand, Budweiser, made the most of its World Cup involvement last week, coming out on top as the most searched for brand during the second week of the Cup.
Budweiser is an official sponsor as well as a sponsor of the USA team. According to data from Hitwise, UK internet searches for the beer (owned by Belgian beer giant Anheuser-Busch) increased by 25% between the week ending June 12 and the week ending June 19.
Furthermore, its Experian Hitwise World Cup Brands Index score increased from 145 to 182 based upon the volume of searches for the brand.
Budweiser was the only brand featured in last week’s Index to retain its position in the top five. The remaining top four positions in the table were this week filled by sponsors from a variety of categories, with car manufacturer Kia in second place and significantly outperforming its larger automotive rivals.
Kia (Slovakian team sponsor and FIFA partner) saw UK internet searches increase by 13.2% and its Brand Index improve from 91 to 103. Fiat was the next best performing automotive brand with an 8.2% increase in searches. Australian shopping centre giant, Westfield, completed the top five along with Vodafone and Adidas.
It’s interesting that the brands that performed well in the Experian Hitwise World Cup Brands Index this week were those sponsoring the ‘underdog’ teams: Kia (Slovakia), Westfield (Australia), Vodafone (Greece) and Budweiser (USA), said Hitwise Research Director Robin Goad. But given the poor performances of some of the favourites in the opening games, this isn’t perhaps so surprising.
Meanwhile, following the 20-fold increase in searches for vuvuzelas, there was a further 4-fold increase in searches last week. During the week ending June19 there were five times as many searches for ‘vuvuzela’ than for ‘wayne rooney’, the England team’s most searched for player.
Bavaria, the Dutch larger that is currently awaiting punishment from FIFA for its earlier ambush marketing stunt during the Holland and Denmark game, was the fifth most visited beer website in the UK on June 15.