Every week during the World Cup Hitwise Intelligence will be publishing the Experian Hitwise Brand Search Index, our way of measuring a selection of brands’ sponsorship activities. The Index is based upon the volume of UK Internet searches for multiple variations of each brand. All of the brands selected are either official Fifa World Cup sponsors, or sponsors of national teams with products that have strong brand recognition in the UK. The base for the index was set at 100 using the average weekly search volume for each brand during May 2010.

South African Airways was the brand that benefited most its sponsorship of the Fifa Football World Cup last week. UK Internet searches for the South African Airways brand (one of the South African team’s official sponsors) increased by 129.2% between the week ending June 5th and the week ending June 12th. South African Airways’ Experian Hitwise World Cup Brands Index score increased from 109 for the week ending June 5th to 250 for the week ending June 12th.

Brand Index, Week 1 – Top 5 performers:

1. South African Airways: 129.2% increase in brand searches between the weeks ending June 5th and June 12th.
2. Heineken: 75.0%
3. Carlsberg: 50.0%
4. Corona: 50.0%
5. Budweiser: 33.3%

The remaining top four positions in the table were taken up by beer companies, with Heineken (one of the Netherlands’ sponsors) experiencing a 75% increase in searches for its brand in the UK last week. Carlsberg (official sponsors of the England team) and Corona (sponsors of Mexico, South Africa’s opponents in the tournament’s opening match) both experienced a 50% increase, while searches for Budweiser (sponsors of the USA, England’s opponents last Saturday and also Fifa World Cup sponsors) were up by a third.

The massive spike in searches for South African Airways illustrates the appetite for last minute travel to watch the World Cup. There has also been an 85% increase in searches for flights to South Africa over the last couple of weeks. However, the industry Index that saw the biggest increase in searches last week was Food and Drink (up by 8%), as illustrated by the strong performance of beer brands. It just beat Travel (up 7.4%), while Technology and Telecoms came in third with a 4.8% increase.

Other ways in which the World Cup has influenced UK online behaviour over the last week include:

• Following the England vs. USA match on Saturday, there was a 12-fold increase in searches for unfortunate England goalkeeper Robert Green.
• UK Internet visits to Gambling – Sports websites increased by 13% on the previous week. The biggest beneficiaries of thin increase in traffic were: Betfair Soccer (soccer.betfair.com, visits up 67%), William Hill Sports Betting (sports.williamhill.com, visits up 26%), and BetFred (www.betfred.com, visits up 23%).
• 1 in every 144 Internet searches in the UK was World cup related last week. The Fifa website remains the biggest recipient of World Cup search traffic, and last week was the 109th most visited website in the UK, and the fourth most popular Sports website.

Via: Hitwise Intelligence – Robin Goad Weblog

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