How to Use World Cup For Consumer Relationship Building.

The count down is nearly over and soon all eyes will be on Brazil for the 2014 World Cup. Social media has become a fundamental tool for businesses aiming to engage with their football fan users at a deeper level than just advertising.This blog aims to give you some inspiration and ideas on how you can utilize the World Cup to develop campaigns that will strengthen your relationship with your customer.

Social media is bringing the world closer together, and there isn't a better time to witness this than during a worldwide event such as the World Cup. This fact offers an opportunity out there for businesses to connect with users on a different level over a mutual interest in soccer. Brands have already been teasing and building campaigns, two of which are Adidas and McDonalds.

Adidas: Adidas hosted an online poll in 2012 with Brazilian Football Fans asking them to help name the official World Cup ball, which was eventually called Brazuca. Since then the ball, Brazuca, has gathered a following of over 112,000 followers on Twitter where teaser content has been slowly released since. The final campaign for Adidas has not yet been revealed but they still have managed to capture their users attention.

McDonalds: McDonalds understands that people love to take a good 'selfie' and have invited consumers to tweet pictures that illustrate their favourite moments at McDonalds. Arcos Dorados, the brand's main franchise operator in Brazil, intends to use the pictures for outdoor media across the entire of Latin America during the World Cup events. You can imagine how excited people are at the prospect of their picture making it to a billboard in Brazil. McDonalds is literally creating a World party in Brazil for the event.

Other brands are focusing on content because they understand that football fans will literally watch whatever they can if it relates to their team and their country. Football fans are passionate if nothing else and harnessing this emotion within them could be priceless for your brand.

So what can we do?This really depends on your brand and the ultimate goal (no pun intended) that you have for this campaign. Here are some fictional examples based on certain niche areas:

Children's website: You could run a campaign where parents tweet their children's drawings inspired by the World Cup in return for either a summer soccer training camp in your local area, or World Cup merchandise or tickets to your local team's home game.

Bar: You could run a contest to create the ultimate World Cup cocktail where entrees create the name and ingredients for the cocktail. This then becomes the cocktail of the month at that bar and the winner drinks their cocktail for free for the month.

What need to be a the forefront of your campaign is digital engagement and social media that will showcase the fans themselves enjoying the build up or the events whilst they are happening. Ideally it will run seamlessly across multiple platforms so users can access and enjoy your content anytime.

What ideas do you have for campaigns during the World Cup? Will you be taking advantage of the event?