According to brandrepublic reports, Argentine player Lionel Messi was the most talked-about footballer on social media during the World Cup, according to research by Hootsuite’s analytics tool UberVu. Messi received 363,000 mentions during the tournament. The Brazilian player Neymar came a close second with 316,000 mentions.
The most active day for player mentions was 24 June, after Suarez garnered 78,000 mentions following his sending off for biting an Italian player.
The World Cup hashtag was used a total of 24 million times during the tournament.
Brazil was the most talked-about country in social conversation with 13 per cent of overall mentions; Germany was next with eight per cent, followed by Argentina with seven per cent.
Merinda Peppard, the EMEA marketing director at Hootsuite, said: “We found that the brands that succeeded on social during the tournament were those who were able to demonstrate creative relevance with their content.
“For marketers, this means ensuring social content not only relates to specific moments in time, but also strongly ties back to the brand message and personality. Content that is out of context or produced on the wrong platforms simply won’t create the desired impact.”
Specsavers’ quick reaction tweet that made fun out of Luis Suarez for biting an Italian player proved to be one of the most popular of the tournament, earning more than 29,000 retweets and 13,000 favorites.
Sony and Adidas were the most talked-about partner brands with 2.1 million mentions each.
Adidas had the most mentioned hashtag (#allin) with 1.1 million mentions. It also had the most active day of all partner brands on the 27 June with 100,000 brand mentions when it announced it would remove the ad of Suarez on Copacabana beach after fans queued to have their picture taken with it.
Overall the most retweeted World Cup tweets were:
1 Tim Howard believes in the USA – 65,000 retweets
2 Rihanna supporting Brazil – 32,000 retweets
3 Specsavers taking the mickey out of Suarez’s bite – 29,000 retweets
4 Rihanna urging Brazil on – 19,000 retweets
5 The Empire State Building supporting Argentina in the semi-final – 14,000 retweets
