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Cricket World Cup dominates Indian Social Media discussions as brands compete to win a greater share of Social Media buzz
By: Farshad Family, Managing Director- Media, Nielsen

Pepsi tops the brand charts mid way through the tournament; a host of official sponsors and advertisers enter the social media conversation Ireland jumps up the ranks and Bangladesh bests South Africa and Sri Lanka; Dhoni stays behind Ponting and Afridi amongst social media users even as Sachin continues to reign

Indias most prominent brands jumped on the social media bandwagon more aggressively than ever before during the Cricket World Cup 2011, according to a report on social media marketing and buzz by NM Incite, a Nielsen McKinsey company. The study looked at the social media universe in totality including blogs, discussion boards, forums, YouTube and Twitter in addition to the brands Facebook pages, gathering intelligence across platforms to listen to what consumers are talking about. Brand Pepsi leads the list of brands that are dominating the social media sphere mid-way through the tournament and is followed by Nokia, LG, Vodafone, Sony and Coca Cola respectively. Though the Soccer World Cup was a tentative start as far as brands leveraging social media went last year, this years Cricket World Cup has seen the emergence of savvy marketers aggressively driving their association with the event through social media.

Continuous engagement scores for brands

Surprisingly, some of the most popular and active sports brands, though closely associated with the event, feature in the bottom half of the list with Adidas only slightly ahead of Reebok and Nike. For global sports brands, an association with a large sporting event is to be expected. Some brands have managed to keep their social media campaigns far more dynamic by altering content and stimulus during the course of the tournament rather than have a more limited approach.

New Heroes join old ones on social media

Amongst players, Sachin Tendulkar continues to lead the charts but the gap between him and the next two, Shahid Afridi and Ricky Ponting has reduced compared to pre-event buzz. Indian skipper MS Dhoni has fallen from fourth place before the tournament to seventh place and has been replaced by Stuart Broad. Shakib Al Hasan finds himself amongst the other stalwarts ahead of Yusuf Pathan. Player performance likely to be the key driver of buzz during matches but what has changed is that Twitter has

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emerged as the preferred destination of live match scores typically, this means that it will act as a trigger for tuning into the match itself, making a difference to how consumers interact with brands on traditional media like television or other websites broadcasting the matches.

Surprises spark greater buzz

Team India managed to retain its top spot as the most talked about team, though share of voice surrounding the men in blue has dropped from pre-event levels. Minnows Ireland have shot up the rankings due to their surprising performance against more established teams, while Bangladesh continues to do better than more experienced sides like Sri Lanka and South Africa. What seem to be driving buzz during the tournament on blogs, boards and Facebook is the pre and post match analyses by users as well as the unexpected performance of underdogs like Ireland and Bangladesh. This means that the new heroes and the next batch of brand endorsers could very well be decided by social media.

Chart 1: Brands linked with World Cup: Share of Voice

*Ofcial ICC World Cup Partner. (The study included ofcial sponsors, their leading competitors and the largest advertisers by volume on the Cricket World Cup during the period of the study). Source: NM Incite, a Nielsen McKinsey Company CGM Type: Global sources including Twitter, blogs, forums (including Facebook pages) Time Period: Feb 18 Mar 11, 2011

Copyright c 2011 The Nielsen Company. All rights reserved. Nielsen and Nielsen logo are trademarks or registered trademarks of The Nielsen Company.

Chart 2: Players Share of Voice

Source: NM Incite, a Nielsen McKinsey Company CGM Type: Global sources including Twitter, blogs, forums (including Facebook pages) Time Period: Feb 18- Mar 11, 2011

Chart 3: World Cup Teams Share of Voice

Source: NM Incite, a Nielsen McKinsey Company CGM Type: Global sources including Twitter, blogs, forums (including Facebook pages) Time Period: Feb 18 Mar 11, 2011

About NM Incite
NM Incite, a Nielsen McKinsey Company, builds upon the industry-leading social media and online brand metrics, consumer insights and real-time market intelligence of Nielsen BuzzMetrics and the capability building, proprietary knowledge and expertise in areas of marketing & sales, organization and service operations of McKinsey to help businesses harness the full potential of social media intelligence. NM Incite currently operates in 24 countries with headquarters in New York. For more information, please visit www.nmincite.com or Twitter: @nmincite

Copyright c 2011 The Nielsen Company. All rights reserved. Nielsen and Nielsen logo are trademarks or registered trademarks of The Nielsen Company.