Summary
Opta. Best use of Social Media.
- Enhance position as an ingredient brand
- Develop a thought leadership position
- Strengthen brand in the mind of the end user (fans) to underpin the B2B positioning and achieve pull-through
- To develop our business on a Europe wide, multi-sport basis
Corporate Objectives
- Expose influencers to the Opta brand
- Increase interaction with fans
- Position Opta as the go-to experts on sport stats
- Gain traction with target companies and media
- NOT direct lead generation…..sharing, not selling
Social Media Objectives
- Provide insighful, interesting and highly viral content via Twitter
- Target specific media influencers
- Be highly responsive and accessible – a key differentiator
- Have a Europe wide focus – a key differentiator
Strategic Thinking
- Creation of a family of characters
- Creation of a tweeting style, ending each tweet with a summary word
- Facebook also used to develop debate with more detailed content
- Social content (including live mentions) used on a corporate site
Unique Tactics
- 0-13k Twitter followers in a year
- 0-2.5k Facebook fans
- Brand strengthened in the mind of fans
- Interaction with key media prospects and influencers
- Engagement with BBC/Sky/Guardian/Times/ITV
- Brand values reinforced
Effectiveness and Result
- 0-13k Twitter followers in a year
- 0-2.5k Facebook fans
- Brand strengthened in the mind of fans
- Interaction with key media prospects and influencers
- Engagement with BBC/Sky/Guardian/Times/ITV
- Brand values reinforced
Opta – an overview
Opta are a leading supplier of sports information.
We collect data from sports matches and database, package and supply that information to B2b clients in the following sectors:
- Internet and Mobile Web Publishers
- Broadcasters
- Newspapers and the Print Media
- Betting Companies
- Brands and Sponsors
Professional Sports Clubs
If you’re watching sport and you see statistics, information or data – the chances are that they will have come from Opta.
Opta was formed in 1996 and are based in London, Leeds, Milan, Munich and Madrid. We employ 100 full time staff and 250 part time analysts.
How Opta products are used
Our information is used by clubs such as Chelsea, Manchester City and AC Milan to scout and recruit players from across Europe.
It is used by bookmakers such as William Hill and Ladbrokes to populate their websites and settle bets.
Broadcasters such as Sky Sports, ESPN and ITV use Opta data to inform and educate their commentary teams, power their broadcast graphics and bring colour to their sports news bulletins.
Publishers such as The Times, The Guardian and News of the World enhance their sports coverage in print and online with Opta data while sponsors such as Castrol and Gillette more effectively leverage high profile sponsorship deals using our products.
Strategy – broader business issues the company is facing
- An increasingly commoditised product and the need to add value and differentiate through
brand - Rapid growth across Europe and the challenge of maintaining a consistent brand message
- Increasing competitive pressures from specialised competitors
Objectives of the campaign
The main objectives of our social media strategy are as follows:
To expose influencers within target companies and the wider media to Opta
[associated corporate objective – enhance position as an ingredient brand]
To strengthen our position in the mind of sports fans as the authority on stats
[associated corporate objective – enhance brand in the mind of fans to underpin B2b
positioning]
To deliver highly relevant, engaging and viral content that shows the industry that we are a multi-sport, multi-language provider of top quality sports insights.
[associated corporate objective – to develop our business on a Europe wide multi-sport basis]
We believe we can use social media to make Opta the pioneers of creating social currency from sports stats.
The target audience
The target audience for this campaign are influencers within the sports industry and sports fans.
Media, channels or techniques used
To ensure that we segment our audiences appropriately, we have set up several Twitter accounts across multiple sports and multiple languages.
The Opta Social Media Family
The Opta Tweet Style
To enable us to keep our tweeting style consistent across a multi-sport, multi-language campaign, we implement a standard style that takes the following form:
NUMBER – FACT – SUMMARY WORD
For example:
23 – Pele committed more fouls (23) than any other player at the 1970 World Cup – Hack.
This tweeting style has become a key feature of the popularity of the Opta Twitter feeds. More examples of the popularity of this style can be seen later in this submission document.
Timescales of the campaign
This campaign was implemented in June 2009 and is ongoing, with a 6 monthly review process.
Budgets
The nature of any social media campaign is that the resources allocated come mainly from time
and energy needed to be dedicated enough to make it work.
No actual budget has been spent in this campaign.
Results
This section refers to the Social Media Objectives stated in the summary page. Objectives have an overview of the results followed by examples.
Examples shown are from the main Twitter feed, Opta Joe.
1) Expose influencers to the Opta brand and engage with them. Gain traction with influencers within target media companies.
Examples of how our Social Media strategy has enabled us to be valued by key influencers within our target markets. This includes notoriously difficult companies to engage with, such as The BBC.
Engaging with Mark Bright – BBC Sport Presenter
Client testimonial
Twitter has enabled us to connect with end users of our data in a way that hasn’t been possible
before, as well as strengthening our brand across all of our target markets.
It is rare now that we will go into any business meeting or networking event without Opta Joe
getting a mention.
Simon Banoub, director of marketing, Opta.
