WORLD CUP MARKETING

The recent World Cup was not just about national football teams from around the world battling it out, it was also a marketing war among different brands and companies. This week, our social media Kung Fu master River will have a look at how brands used Weibo in their World Cup marketing campaigns.

Following the trend, P&G works with “Liu the Octopus”

This year’s world cup helped popularise Liu Yuxi , a Chinese sports anchor who works at CCTV (China’s BBC). Liu Yuxi was known as the “team killer” during the World Cup, earning this reputation by dooming each team that she wore the t-shirt for during the games live broadcast. When Liu made the faithful decision to model the Spanish kit on TV during the match between Spain and The Netherlands, the score 1:5 was the biggest loss ever by a reigning champion. She has also been named by netizens as Liu the Octopus, just like Paul the Octopus. [en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_the_Octopus] Her Weibo weibo.com/liuhanghang followers grew to 750,000 during the World Cup.

 Reacting quickly to this trend, P&G weibo.com/proctergamble asked Liu to put on their promotion shirt for its latest products, and posted an ad on Liu’s Weibo garnering more than 10,000 interactions. At the same time P&G has also started selling the shirt that is worn by Liu along with the consumer goods on JD.com, one of the largest e-commerce site in China. 

 Not sure how I would feel about Liu Yuxi wearing a PingPong Digital t-shirt, lets see what happens to P&G now. 

Article: River Huang