This Week in Relevance

Don’t Feel Too Bad About Your World Cup Bracket – Nike may have missed the boat too

Sean Jensen of the Chicago Sun-Times (via Twitter) commented interestingly on Nike’s Soccer’s Write the Future Advertising campaign that continues to prominently feature players from teams that did not make the Semi Final round. While traditional soccer fans certainly recognize these players from their club teams and past international play, will the Ad resonate with consumers new to soccer via the 2010 World Cup without the platform of Semi Final and Final round play? Interestingly, per the NY Times interactive measure of Facebook player mentions by-day, Cristiano Ronaldo – featured in the Nike spot – of a Portugal team that was eliminated June 29th still ranks in the top 5 most mentioned players on July 7th. Only 1 other player – Lionel Messi – that did not participate in the Semi Finals ranks in the top 15.

Using Social Media to Measure Offline Effectiveness
Using Social Media activity to gauge user engagement is not new to the World Cup. Joe Hart of Search Engine Land provides some guidance on using Social Media to understand audience perception of an offline campaign. As Hart outlines, structuring an initiative with social media monitoring tools correctly should allow you to segment user
dialogue about a specific campaign from base brand activity which can be particularly helpful in determining how a given message is being received.

The (Indian?) Summer of LeBron James
Darren Rovell of CNBC examines one of the biggest sports stories of the summer – LeBron James’ free agency – and how James might have used his website to announce his decision. In the time since Rovell published the article James has created a verified twitter account (with 250K+ followers and growing) and announced that he will provide his decision during a televised special to be aired Thursday, July 8th at 9 ET on ESPN. That ESPN would adjust its Thursday night primetime schedule to accommodate James – and the rabid following of James’ twitter account after only 3 tweets – certainly proves there is an audience interested in his decision. One particularly interesting question Rovell examines is how James’ marketing team can capitalize on the momentum and make www.lebronjames.com a destination for fans (and advertisers) moving forward. Rovell’s answer? Relevant and interesting content.

Update:

Christopher Heine at ClickZ details the New York Knicks’ Search presence on Bing for the Keyword “LeBron James” and other marquee NBA free agents this summer. While the foresight to run a search campaign in conjunction with such a highly visible national story is impressive – the creative and landing page execution falls a bit short in referencing and dropping users on a landing page for tickets to last season. Note – it seems the Knicks’ Bing campaign has now been taken offline

Staying Relevant during the Panama-adCenter Transition
The Yahoo! Search Marketing Blog addresses some frequently asked questions and provides some campaign management recommendations in preparation for the upcoming transition to the adCenter platform. Among the most significant changes advertisers will have to make is transitioning from the 40 character titles allowed by Panama to the 25 character title restriction in adCenter. While many advertisers are accustomed to 25 character titles in Google, the Yahoo! Team does provide some insightful tips for distilling the relevancy of your SEM Ad Title.

Connecting the Dots of Your Digital Audience
Murthy Nukala, CEO of Adchemy provides his perspective on the challenge of marketing to an increasingly fragmented digital audience. Reconciling the commonalities (or differences) of an advertiser’s digital audience across publishers, channels, etc has obvious implications on reaching customers with a relevant message. Technologies that enable efficient campaign execution across audience segments will undoubtedly be the advertisers best friend.