Adidas Reign Supreme as Most Talked About Euro 2012 Sponsor

Adidas drove the most social media discussion of sponsorship during the group stages of UEFA Euro 2012, drugs according to research conducted by Precise.

During the football matches, Adidas took a 29 per cent share of daily English-language conversations on social media about the sponsors.

In second place was McDonald’s with 17 per cent just ahead of Orange with 15 per cent. But Orange beat Carlsberg with 12 per cent and, impressively, Coca Cola with10 per cent.

Use of its UEFA Euro 2012 app generated many of these mentions, indicating the app was popular. However, the app did not drive as much in the way of user-generated opinions, Precise says.Interestingly, despite the growth of social media since 2010, sponsors of UEFA EURO 2012 drove a lower volume of conversations than the sponsors of the 2010 FIFA World Cup

Precise says that although Euro 2012 sponsors allegedly ramped up their social media activity around the tournament, digital activations and apps generally failed to score big in producing active discussion about their brands.

According to the research, traditional offline sponsorship is still driving the lion’s share of conversations.

James Withey, head of Brand Insight with Precise, observed, “Social media use has exploded over the last two years, but that doesn’t necessarily mean people will discuss sponsor activities in ever-greater volumes.

”So the question is – how do sponsors get people talking about what they are doing? The success of those brands with a strong focus on using offline activities to get people talking about them online, suggests that sponsors would benefit from better coordinating their offline and online marketing activities.”