Currys wins TV ad race

In the weeks building up to the World Cup, Currys and PC World apparently had the most memorable TV ad campaign in the UK, according to Nielsen. 

The study compared 28 adverts that were deemed to be ‘football-related’, and consumers could apparently recall Currys & PC World ahead of Pot Noodle, Coca-Cola, Nike and M&Ms.

The score of 166 means that the advert was 1.66 times more memorable than the UK average for all campaigns.

This is the ad in question. I’m pretty sure I’ve never seen it.

World Cup ecommerce habits

A Peer 1 survey of 2,000 UK consumers found that a quarter of people plan to watch the World Cup online via on demand TV, mobile or tablet.

35% of respondents plan to spend more than £50 on entertaining during the World Cup.

Finally, a third of respondents said they would purchase merchandise, food or drink online during the World Cup.

Sony tops the social charts

Data from Hootsuite shows that Sony is far outperforming other official partners in terms of social mentions.

Sony’s mentions spiked above 200,000 on June 10, more than the six other brands combined, but this is due to its announcements at E3 rather than its World Cup campaign.

In the battle of the hashtags, Adidas’ #Allin campaign had been gaining far more exposure than the other partners’ efforts, though that has tailed off in the days immediately before the tournament kicks off.

Overall there have been more than 530,000 tweets using the hashtag #worldcup.

Social users love goal scorers

Data from Adobe shows that the World Cup will become the most social sporting event ever, surpassing the Super Bowl and Olympics in total social mentions.  

“World Cup” has generated 19m+ social mentions since June 2013, and 90% of the world (196 countries) has already contributed to the conversation, more than the Olympics (84%) and Super Bowl (78%).

Cristiano Ronaldo was the most mentioned player in May with more than 1.5m mentions, while Neymar was 2nd with 1.2m+.

Among the England team the old faces dominate social mentions, with Lampard, Gerrard and Rooney generating 37% of total mentions of all squad members. 

WSJ does great content

The Wall Street Journal has come up trumps with this fabulous interactive World Cup chart that finds a winner for everything but football.

Who are the biggest drinkers? The Russians! Most unmarried women? Brazil! Most foreign film Oscar nominations? France!

It also reveals that if the World Cup was based on the lowest traffic death rate, England would be champions.

Thanks to @CircusSocial for bringing this to my attention.

Even football fans multiscreen

Google has published a whole heap of stats about the search habits of football fans.

For example, multiscreening is becoming more common. 20% of UK searches took place on mobile during the World Cup 2010 Final compared to 53% during the recent Champions League semi-final between Real Madrid and Bayern Munich.

UK fans are over two-and-a-half times more likely to search on mobile during major live football events than other devices compared to four years ago.

The research also finds that football is by far the most watched sport on YouTube globally this year, with 64.7m hours of related footage watched last month alone. 

Worldwide Google search data shows there was more interest in the World Cup than the Olympics, the Super Bowl and the Tour de France combined.

UK retailers to rake in billions

The World Cup will generate nearly £1.3bn in sales for UK retailers, pubs and restaurants if England make it through the second round. 

The report from VoucherCodes.co.uk is based on analysis of the 2010 World Cup tournament, plus interviews with 605 shoppers and 40 UK retailers responsible for 18% of UK annual retail sales.

It predicts that if England makes it to the final then fans will spend more than £2.5bn on souvenirs, sportswear, new televisions or celebrating at home or in the pub.

Online retailers are expected to perform very well during the World Cup, with an additional £174.71m of spending expected by the second stage, increasing 110% to £367.49m should England be finalists.

Ronaldo is the world’s most marketable footballer

The Brazilians may not want to hear this, but Cristiano Ronaldo is the world’s most marketable footballer according to analysis by Repucom.

The research measured the perceptions of more than 6,500 people in 13 markets, then extrapolated the data to represent the views of more than 1.5bn people.

Neymar didn’t even make the top four. Ronaldo’s score of 79.49 put him top, followed by Lionel Messi with 75.87, Gerard Pique on 62.9 and (weirdly) Fernando Torres on 62.7.

Keep up-to-date with this data viz

To keep up-to-date with stats during the World Cup check out Brandwatch’s data visualisation.

Today, for instance, it shows that the hashtag #worldcup2014 has been used 150,000 times compared to just 80,000 for #worldcup.

Impact of football on footfall

This infographic from Experian reveals the impact that the World Cup has on our shopping habits. 

Apparently UK footfall decreased by 5.8% during England’s warm up match against Peru on May 30.

One final infographic…

This infographic is like the snippet of extra footage that appears at the end of the credits in Marvel movies. Consider it your reward for persisting with my article for this long.

Created by Crowdtap, it delves further into the social side of the World Cup. Enjoy!