Summer 2024 is, without a doubt, the summer of sport. The Olympic Games, Wimbledon, Tour de France, and the Euros are all incredible opportunities for marketers and brands to connect with customers.
How can brands engage in conversations that are authentic, happening in real time, and in a way that adds value to their communities?
Like the athletes competing this summer, the brands that consistently capitalize on viral moments and trending conversations aren’t the luckiest, they are the best prepared. The first element of that preparation is the ability to listen, aggregate, and analyze the thousands of conversations happening on digital channels. With the right strategy for social listening, marketers can get ahead of the competition to publish content at the right time, to the right people.
With new generative AI tools, leading brands will be able to go from insight, to content, to engagement and sales in minutes. Brands without the proper tools and strategy will be forced to watch the competition fade into the distance.
It all starts with smart listening
Customers are talking about your brand or topics relevant to your brand on dozens of channels. The volume and unstructured nature of these conversations can be overwhelming, and social listening strategies and tools help brands extract value and cut through the noise.
AI has been a critical component of social listening for years and is becoming increasingly important for several reasons:
- Leveraging AI is the only way to effectively synthesize the billions of conversations happening every minute across social media channels. As channels continue to proliferate and conversations become increasingly diverse and niche, the right AI-powered listening is the foundation for effective marketing and advertising.
- Particularly during event marketing, around major sporting events for example, moments to engage are measured in seconds or minutes, not hours or days. Generative AI is changing the game with regards to time to insight as these AI tools can quickly summarize large volumes of information and present insights in ways that are immediately actionable.
- Finally, the best brands in the world are unifying their AI-powered social listening and their traditional research strategies to guide the development of competitive, consumer-focused marketing campaigns. In a world where it is increasingly challenging to get anyone to answer a survey, business insights teams benefit from the ability to validate insights against larger unsolicited datasets using AI.
Social Listening Best Practices from Successful Brands
During the UEFA Women’s Euro 2022, social listening helped Volkswagen double down on a popular message. During the tournament, the brand introduced Tiny Buzz, a small car that delivered the ball to players on the pitch at key matches throughout the tournament. Using social listening, Volkswagen learned that people loved the tiny car, and they quickly jumped on the opportunity to create an engaging X channel, @TinyFootballCar, along with rapid fan replies and interactions throughout the 26-day tournament.
Ferrara Candy uses social listening to surprise and delight fans (including some big stars). When singer-songwriter Halsey tweeted her preference for a specific Trolli’s Sour Brite Crawlers flavor, Ferrara spotted the request and immediately shipped her a custom pack of the candy, resulting in exposure to millions of her followers. Kathryn Dobbs, the CMO of the Columbus Blue Jackets professional ice hockey team tweeted that her pre-game snack of choice was Ferrara’s Fun Dip. Ferrara caught this right away with social listening and collaborated with the Blue Jackets to give Fun Dip to fans during some games.
Early Summer of Sport Insights
The Summer of Sport has just begun, but early listening data may offer some insights into themes and topics ready to break through.
New to this Olympics this year – Breakdancing is generating some buzz and certainly has the potential for great moments and great content. Through the first two weeks of June, there have been more than 160,000 global mentions of “breakdancing” or the official Olympics term “breaking”. Team GB breakdancer Karam Singh and Afghan refugee Manizha Talash who is part of the Refugee Team are garnering special attention.
We see at least one global powerhouse already paying attention to this exciting new Olympic sport. Nike has refreshed its dance inspired Own the Floor campaign and directly referenced breakdancing.
The Takeaway
Social media marketing has always rewarded first movers. To consumers, brands that hit on these viral moments may seem lucky. In reality, brands that will win gold this summer are those that have prepared well and deployed effective AI strategies to gather actionable insights from the buzz.
Athletes tackle every sporting event already believing that they are going to win. They’ve trained and prepared for several scenarios and are ready to adjust strategies quickly if needed. Marketers need to be the same way. They need to have the right technology and workflows in place to create a relevant, insight-based marketing strategy.
Michael Maas leads Sprinklr sales in Europe. His priorities are business growth through direct sales, accelerating existing opportunities across top European brands, and expanding the recently relaunched unified partner program.
Previously, Mr. Maas served as Vice President for EMEA North at ServiceNow where he led robust growth in both direct and channel sales for the Benelux & Nordics, UK & Ireland, and Central Europe. Mr. Maas' 25-year career includes leadership roles with organizations like VERITAS, Symantec, EMC, Good Technology, and BlackBerry.
