Ronaldinho and Nike Football Viral Marketing Success

Nike Football's video of Ronaldinho is an excellent example of a viral campaign that took off online, resulting in Nike's brand significantly benefiting.

The seemingly amateur video shows Ronaldinho don a pair of Nike football boots from a gold case and then unveil his skill by shooting volleys from outside the box onto the crossbar, controlling each rebound to hit the bar 4 times in a row. Internet chat rooms lit up with conversations on whether the video was staged, computer generated, or edited.

The video is available in the archives of www.NikeFootball.com and after the video, viewers are invited to forward it to a friend or download it. The video is also available on YouTube which received 2% of visits from searches for 'ronaldinho' for the 4 weeks ending March 11.

The association with Ronaldinho seems to have resulted in a lift in online brand awareness for Nike Football, with Hitwise Search Intelligence revealing a strong correlation between the share of UK internet searches for "ronaldinho" and "nike football".

Nike Football has successfully harnessed the viral nature of chat rooms and online forums with buzz for this video -- buzz that is difficult to generate from a corporate ad. The Nike Football brand is prominently featured throughout the video and this seems to be having a direct impact on online brand awareness - Nike Football's website (nikefootball.nike.com) is currently the second most visited Sports Brand site in the UK.

To request a copy of the Hitwise White Paper on Best Practices for Search Engine Brand Management, click here.

Hitwise Search Intelligence data reveal the most popular terms that resulted in traffic to websites within the Hitwise 'Sports - Brands' industry for the four weeks ending March 18 2006.

Fast Mover: YouTube

www.youtube.com


Position for week ending December 3: 2,520 (All Categories)
Position for week ending March 18: 168
Positions jumped: 2,352

YouTube (www.youtube.com), the independent video site that has leapt to fame through viral channels, has now overtaken video search offered by internet giants Google and Yahoo! For the week ending March 11, the site attracted four times more visits than Yahoo! Video Search (video.search.yahoo.com) and nearly twice the share of visits compared to Google Video Search (video.google.com).

YouTube's rise to fame began in November but really exploded from January in the UK, with visits from email services and online communities driving the site's growth. Comparing the market share of visits to YouTube from November 2005 through to February 2006, visits to the site have nearly increased by a factor of ten. Until November, Yahoo! Video Search was the clear leader in online video search, when it was overtaken by Google Video Search. YouTube surpassed Yahoo! Video Search in January and then overtook Google Video Search recently in February.

Yahoo! Video Search still enjoys longer session duration than both YouTube and Google Video Search, with UK internet users spending an average of 14 minutes and 17 seconds on the site for the week ending March 11, compared to 12 minutes 38 seconds on YouTube and 8 minutes 27 seconds on Google Video Search. Websites in the Net Communities and Chat category accounted for 20% of visits to YouTube, with MySpace accounting for 7% of all visits to the site.

News In Brief

Google lands on Mars

Following fast on the popularity of Google Earth, UK internet users are full of enthusiasm for satellite images of the red planet since the launch of Google Mars (www.google.com/mars) earlier this month. In collaboration with NASA researchers, Google has created some of the most detailed scientific maps of Mars that have ever been made, resulting in a surge of interest. Share of searches for "google mars" overtook searches for "mars" for the week ending March 18, 2006, increasing 58 times. Searches for "google mars" were 38% higher than those for "mars", which has also increased, up four times compared with the previous week.

However, Google Earth is still much more popular than Google Mars. A Hitwise Search Term Suggestion report reveals that in the past four weeks, "google mars" was the 22nd most popular term that included the keyword "google" while "google earth" came in at #2, just after "google".

TripAdvisor goes from strength to strength

TripAdvisor joined the 100 most visited websites in the UK in July 2005, but most recently hit a high the week ending February 18, ranking #83 among all websites. In the week ending March 18, TripAdvisor was the 10th most popular Travel website, highlighting its brand strength with searches for 'trip advisor' more than doubling year-on-year.

By offering reviews of hotels and destinations by individual travellers, TripAdvisor hosts huge amounts of constantly updated content - a feature that helps the site appear among the top organic listings on search engines. In the past four weeks, there were 36,614 search terms sending visits to TripAdvisor and among the top 20 were searches on destinations from 'edinburgh' and 'tenerife' to 'jamaica' and 'lake garda'.

TripAdvisor currently attracts 42% more visits from those aged 55+ than average for the internet, highlighting the site's strength with "silver surfers". 62% of visits to the site are from those in Social Grade A/B and C1, whilst the Mosaic Group "Symbols of Success" is the Experian Mosaic Group that is most highly indexed on the site. According to offline statistics compiled by Experian, this group is 152% more likely to book three or more holidays per year and 91% more likely to book holidays online - and so represents a lucrative demographic for travel sites.

Category Spotlight: Travel - Destinations and Accommodation

This category features travel/holiday accommodation and destinations including resorts, tourist locations and hotels. The data below is based on All sites » Weekly rankings for the week ending 25/03/2006 » Ranks by 'Visits'.

Local Competitiveness Index 71.3% of traffic to this category was directed at domestic sites.	Traffic Distribution The chart above illustrates the distribution of this category's traffic for the week among sites in various rank ranges.
Top 10 Upstream Categories 1. Computers and Internet 50.9% 2. Computers and Internet - Search Engines 44.4% 3. Travel 28.4% 4. Travel - Destinations and Accommodation 17.3% 5. Travel - Agencies 7.0% 6. Travel - Transport 3.0% 7. Shopping and Classifieds 3.0% 8. Business and Finance 2.9% 9. Entertainment 2.1% 10. Computers and Internet - Email Services 2.1%	Top 10 Downstream Categories 1. Travel 47.2% 2. Travel - Destinations and Accommodation 27.2% 3. Computers and Internet 13.9% 4. Travel - Agencies 11.5% 5. Computers and Internet - Search Engines 7.3% 6. Business and Finance 7.1% 7. Shopping and Classifieds 4.9% 8. Travel - Maps 4.6% 9. Entertainment 3.8% 10. Travel - Transport 3.1%

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Copyright Hitwise Pty Ltd, March 2006