Is MySpace the future of Web Marketing?

While researching online for my upcoming thesis, I chanced upon several innovative campaigns by Carat Fusion for their clients Motorola and Adidas Soccer.

MySpace Profile as Landing Page

Carat Fusion is the first agency I know that is actively exploring new marketing propositions on MySpace. For Adidias, they created a MySpace profile complete with:

• photos of their sponsored players (with Adidas-sponsored player profiles of Beckham, ZIdane, Kaka too),
• videos of their recent ads, including that ad with young Jose Mourinho,
• competitions,
• blogs and most importantly..
• thousands and thousands of MySpace fans — their target market.

These fans are responisble for adding content and relevancy to their page, creatign comments, forum discussions, controversial arguments .. all leading to hours and hours of sustained engagement with soccer fans and hopefully favourable impressions of the Adidas brand.

Player Profiles

I like the secondary MySpace profile Adidas also created to promote the brand through their sponsored players that ensures geographical targetting of their markets. Not only did they include the most popular ones like Beckham and Zidane but they also have players from different regions: US players such as Eddie Pope, Claudio Reyna; Nakamura for the Japanese and other Asians, Riquelme and Kaka for the South American, Jaime Lozano for the Mexicans. They left out the Australians and Africans though.

And the blogs…

Justin mentioned about World Cup blogs and mentioned Yahoo as one of them, well Adidas surely links to much more… here's a selection for you to lap it all up and reinforce your relationship with Adidas..

Brad Guzan
Allen Hopkins
Lang Whitaker

Even New York Times, IHT and FIFA are bloggers…

New York Times, that venerable paper of United States, is in too on the long-overdue mission of enlightening Americans to the wonders and marvels of THe Beautiful Game. They now have a World Cup section under their Sports vertical and also a blog too, in partnership with another venerable paper International Herald Tribune, to capture all that web traffic and online surfing of their offline readers.

Not to mention FIFA, the world authority on all things soccer with their blog for almost every country here…

Are you reading this, Straits Times? Time to wake up from your self-induced offline coma and jazz up ST Online.

Related Articles: World Cup: Advertising & Influence

Cashing in on World Cup 2006

Unless you are an American, you know why the hell soccer is in the DNA of many male soccer fans.

I am sitting here in my room typing away, with barely 6 hours away from the kickoff of the first game of Germany vs Costa Rica and I swear I can almost hear the gears of the non-US global economy slowing down. Beer companies, clinics, pubs, TV makers, energy drink makers, coffee cafes, soccer jersey sellers can all expect to make big bucks for the next month. =) Yes, if you listen hard enough, maybe u can hear them rubbing their hands with glee…. ok, enough of my own glee and cheesiness..

Google + Nike wants you to read ads

Google and Nike already planned to cash in long ago. Couple of months ago, they co-launched Joga.com, a social network for soccer aficionados. Videos, interviews, group discussions by rabid fans are expected on this new network as Google and Nike hope to cash in by plastering relevant ads every time a rabid fan logs into this network during their conscious intervals between matches. Google is also actively trying to gather more soccer fans to get their exclusive Google account through their sign up page. A good way to upsell and promote the rest of their Google services such as Gmail which only has 5% of global email market share?

VW + Beckham wants to sells you cars 

Volkswagen is also using the World Cup brand + David Beckham's appeal to publicise their Touran model and also the David Beckham academy. A mini-site has been created where you can play games and choose between the role of either a striker, goalkeeper.

Youtube doesn't know what to sell you… yet 

Lets not forget Youtube.com . After the World Cup, perhaps we will see them raise another multi-million dollar round. But whether they will earn money out of this is another matter i shall not discuss here. Heard about their new channel feature recently where you can subscribe to certain channels which groups videos of the same genre? I will sign up for the world cup channel once its available! =)

McDonald's wants to sell you fattening fast food 

And here's another rumor i have yet to verify. I hear certain Mcdonalds's outlets will be broadcasting the live feeds of the games. Now, thats another smart move to cash in if its true. It doesn't seem to end, does it?