Continental TyresWorld Cup Sponsorship Activity: Campaign ReportJuly 2010

Campaign Goals• To support and - via Social Media and Online PR tactics - enhance the following Conti promotional activities

around the 2010 World Cup:

• World Cup Predictor iPhone App and Related Competitions• An iPhone app that allowed users to predict results and win prizes - including a holiday to South

Africa

• ‘Britain’s Biggest Fan’ Web Competition • A web-based competition to find the most dedicated football fan in the UK - prizes included x2

tickets to the World Cup and holidays

• ‘Discover a Diamond’ Twitter and Web Competition• A promotional campaign to encourage ‘World Cup Widows’ to share their favourite world cup

avoidance activities - prizes included wine, fashion accessories and a grand prize of a one carat diamond worth £8.5k

• Pre- and post-World Cup Web Surveys• Twitter polls to support main web surveys, asking a range of topical / engaging questions to

promote the brand and generate campaign content

• Generate coverage for and awareness of these activities on relevant online channels

• Drive interest and traffic to the related microsites and associated Social Media properties, generating positive comment, coverage, links and engagement around them

2

Campaign Highlights

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• All Social/Online PR campaign metrics were beaten, some by more than 400%

• Referring traffic as a result of engagement and PR were the biggest traffic sources for Continental’s Big Game (52%) and Discover a Diamond (81%), with Social Media sources (i.e. Facebook) being in the top 3 referring sites for both

• Coverage was gained on a wide variety of sites and blogs, from national press and tyre and motor industry sites to money saving forums, competition websites and football blogs, promoting the Continental brand to a range of different audiences

• Relationships established with key Social Media outlets - bloggers, forums, web sites etc, which can be built on for future campaigns

The Microsites

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Key Properties

5

Social Media Interactions

YouTube Video Views

7

0

375

750

1125

1500

Start 2nd Report: 15/04/10 4th Report: 14/05/10 6th Report: 11/06/10 8th Report: 08/07/10

iPhone App Video Views

Did we succeed?• We aimed for a target of 1,000 views for the iPhone app tutorial video by the end of the

campaign, which was reached by the 21st of June, the second week of the tournament• Video views started out very strong and grew healthily throughout the duration of the

campaign. They experienced a large spike around the beginning of the World Cup tournament, and this aided the continued growth in popularity

• The majority of views for the video came from it being embedded as a player in various websites (including the microsite), with the second highest origin of views coming from YouTube itself

Current YouTube combined views (for World Cup videos):

2,032

Facebook Ad

8

0

750

1500

2250

3000

Start 2nd Report: 15/04/10 4th Report: 14/05/10

Facebook Ad Clickthroughs

iPhone App Discover A Diamond

Britain’s Biggest Fan

Social Media Bulletins

9

Did we succeed?

• Our target for total views of Social Media bulletins used to support this campaign was 500 across all bulletins. The final total by the end of the campaign was 1,375

• The most popular bulletins related to the iPhone app and a round up of the upcoming competitions that would be run during the sponsorship campaign Total Social Media

Bulletin Views: 1,375

Conclusions

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• The tutorial video for the iPhone app on YouTube was a good piece of content for promoting the app. It was especially good for incentivising coverage of the app on websites and blogs as it was a substantial piece of content for them to include. This is demonstrated by the fact that most of the videos views came from embedded players, rather than the YouTube site itself

• The Twitter profile was an excellent supporting channel in generating interest around Continental’s World Cup activities, especially the Discover a Diamond competition

• Links in tweets from the @ContiUK Twitter profile were a very good source of traffic to the campaign microsites, especially for www.discoveradiamond.co.uk

• The Social Media bulletins created were an effective supporting tool for promoting the campaign and garnering coverage for various aspects of the campaign on blogs and websites

Coverage

Key Coverage

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• The quality of coverage has generally been very good. Competition listings in particular have been great at driving traffic to the sites, particularly Discover a Diamond

• A mention on The Guardian’s website was particularly high-profile for Britain’s Biggest Fan and a video embed and article covering the iPhone app on AOL’s Autoblog was the highest profile piece of coverage for the app overall

Content Value

13

Did we succeed?

• Our supporting content (i.e. video) has been used within news articles and blog posts to enhance and add depth to written content

• Engaging with forums such as Money Saving Experts and listing the competitions on sites like Loquax have produced instrumental pieces of self-generated coverage, resulting in a substantially high percentage of the total amount of traffic driven to the microsites

• The Britain’s Biggest Fan Competition was good for generating coverage on regional and local news sites as they threw their support behind a local person entered into the competition

Conclusions

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• The amount of coverage generated for the various aspects of Continental’s sponsorship and involvement in the World Cup was of a high quality, with nearly every aspect of the campaign covered in one form or another

• Continuous blogger engagement throughout the campaign, using the Social Media bulletins and YouTube video as content tools provided good returns of a range of coverage across a variety of sites, from tyre industry blogs, car industry websites and national news sites

• Having a variety of different competitions and topics to talk about meant a broad range of audiences could be targeted, ensuring maximum exposure for the campaign

• There was a high level of engagement experienced during the Discover a Diamond side competition run on Twitter. This demonstrates that ‘social’ content will propagate naturally if it is interesting and engaging to users - they will want to share this content willingly with their peers

Coverage

15

Coverage

16

Coverage

17

Coverage

18

Coverage

19

Coverage

20

Coverage

21

Coverage

22

Coverage

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Campaign Conclusions

Conclusions

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• Over all, our engagement efforts across all channels, both PR and Social Media, drove by far the biggest proportion of traffic to all of the Continental World Cup microsites

• The campaign demonstrated a well integrated approach to Social Media, especially Discover a Diamond, which had a high level of engagement on Twitter. Also our our recommendations for the Discover a Diamond microsite, such as including a “Tweet This” function were instrumental in raising awareness of the campaign and overall sponsorship on Social Media channels

• Facebook advertising was an extremely effective way to drive traffic to the campaign microsites, and all three ads (for Continental’s Big Game, the iPhone App and Discover a Diamond) had very high response rates, explaining why Facebook is indicated as one of the top five traffic sources for both microsites

• Using Twitter as a supporting channel showed that there is an audience for Continental on Twitter, and that it can be a great way to drive traffic back to Continental branded sites. After Continental’s presence on Twitter became known, other users were able to tag the profile in its tweets relating to Continental, further raising awareness of the brand. It also meant we were able to engage with influential Twitter users and get re-tweets, which drove additional traffic to the microsites

• The competition with the highest level of engagement and response - Discover a Diamond - had so because the entry mechanic was simple, and lent itself to easy sharing on Social Media channels. Additionally, running a smaller side competition on Twitter, with an even simpler entry mechanic was vital in driving high levels of traffic to the competition microsite