https://econsultancy.com/blog/68318-how-is-adidas-football-using-dark-social-how-did-the-pogba-signing-go-so-big/
DELEVAL Marie
RICARD Benjamin
Over the last few years, Social Media has become one
of the most important means to reach customers for companies. Indeed, they
constantly try to reach people with “buzz”: they make the brand even more
famous and recognized by sharing contents and they spread the brand image
through social networks. In one word: it brings the customer closer and it
enables companies to be more open. Besides, Adidas’ aim by 2020 is to deliver
its products quicker and faster, while co-creating content with customers and
being more open. Given that, they have started using a new social media
strategy: The Dark Social.
What is dark social and why does
Adidas want to use this outlet?
First, we have to define what dark social, the new tool that Adidas uses to
increase its traffic. Dark social is essentially the traffic that you do not
track and it is impossible to analyse this traffic. Here is the process: When
people open the link shared, it is classified as direct traffic but it is not.
And it actually happens every day: Millions of people send link and share it
with friends in private: As a consequence, links shared by this way lack
referral tags, so when the addressee clicks on it, its visit will show up as
‘direct’ traffic. The reason why Adidas want to push this type of communication
is to create buzz. The Strategy is to find famous people in strategic place,
loved by their customers and their followers, to share more and more video
content. Their first try was during 2014 in our World Cup newsroom in Rio. Lastly,
they realized a fusion between music and football, and especially two
businesses that made the buzz: Stormy and Pogba. Social Media is free for us,
and it is also the most flexible way to market products or services for
companies. In the social landscape things are constantly evolving, as Adidas
explains “we are looking for the coolest and most used platforms for our key
target consumers.”
How to measure results of dark
social?
Today, as this is only the beginning of this new strategy,
it is still difficult to measure precisely with an official method the results
and the impact of dark social on customers. Up to now, it relies mostly on
Human Resources and Communications. That is to say that Adidas analyses what
people say about products and content, and then uses this analysis in order to
make communities bigger and bigger, with an objective “of up to 500 or 1,000 opinion leaders
in major metropolitan cities over the next couple of seasons.” (Source: Article
of Ben Davis). In parallel, Adidas is currently thinking of how to improve
analysis, by using digital analytics tools they have already developed to
better understand impact and influence of their social media strategy. But
right now, there is now standardised model to analyse.
What is the place of TV in the evolution
of Social Media Strategy?
One important aspect of Social Media is that it is a
reactive tool, that is flexible to context and actuality. In other words, you
are able to change your text or your content until last moment. Given that
statement, TV appears to be quite useless in this kind of strategy, as it is by
default an “all-planned” tool. Once everything is planned, you cannot modify
anything, and so you are vulnerable to last minute breaking news. Moreover,
Social Media (and even more Dark Social) is used to reach individually and more
directly people. Say differently, it prevents companies from “losing money”
uselessly, by targeting the right person at the right moment. On the other
side, TV is more about mass reach and no distinction between users. To put it
in a nutshell, TV still can have a utility for some large big brands, but
Social Media is the most powerful way of communicating today.
Conclusion
To our mind, we found
this article really relevant given that it was dealing with a hot topic.
Indeed, the example of Pogba is up to day the best case for Adidas to
illustrate their new Social Media Strategy. And his signing up with Manchester
United made him the most paid player ever, placing this kind of article at a
higher importance. Therefore, it was really interesting to learn more about how
Adidas managed to use this player to experiment and learn more about their
strategy and their communication. Finally, at a larger scale, we better
understood the new place of social media and how it redistributed cards
compared to TV, which was up to the last few years the most used tool to
communicate for companies.
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