March 15, 2006

Ronaldinho and Nike Football - Another Viral Marketing Success

You may have noticed that I have been beating the brand drum quite a bit lately - today is no exception! Nike Football's video of Ronaldinho is an example of a viral campaign that took off and Nike Football's brand has benefited as a result. The seeming amateur video shows Ronaldinho (football player from Brazil) don a pair of Nike football boots from a gold case. Ronaldinho shows his skill by shooting volleys from outside the box onto the crossbar, controlling each rebound to hit the bar 4 times in a row. Internet chat rooms lit up with conversations on whether the video was staged, computer generated, or edited.

The video is available in the archives of www.NikeFootball.com and after the video, viewers are invited to forward it to a friend or download it. The video is also available on YouTube and the site received 2% of visits from searches for 'ronaldinho' in the past four weeks.

The association with Ronaldinho, named player of the year in 2005, seems to have resulted in a lift in online brand awareness for Nike Football. I found a strong correlation between the share of UK internet searches for "ronaldinho" and "nike football". From the chart below you can see a visual illustration of this correlation - notice in particular the increase in searches for both "nike football" and "ronaldinho" last week. This indicates that consumers are linking the football star with the brand.

Nike Football seems to have successfully harnessed the viral nature of chat rooms and online forums with buzz for this video -- buzz that is difficult to generate from a corporate ad. Nike Football is prominently featured throughout the video and this seems to be having an impact on online brand awareness.

If you are a footie fan, you may also want to watch the latest Nike Football video featuring Ronaldo. After hitting the ball in the net, he smiles at the camera, gives a thumbs up and says (in Portuguese) "Dude, the ball is supposed to hit the net not the bar, ok?" He then kicks the ball again - and hits the bar.

Posted by Heather Hopkins at 07:47 AM

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