What’s Making Brazil Social Such a Success?
The World Cup is showing early signs it may just be the most social sport event – ever. (Even bigger than the social issue plagued Sochi Olympics or the Super Bowl.)  According to Adobe, it’s the world over with international chatter about what has become a highly visual and digital event spanning 230 countries.

Traffic for the event is across every single digital platform but the most commonly used channels for many, Facebook and Twitter, are posting serious numbers that are already surpassing expectations. Although it’s global, a few countries (including the obvious: Brazil) are fueling engagement, traffic and conversations about big moments on field and off. After Brazil, the United States and England are the three countries leading in social media related traffic.

Facebook conversation alone tracked 58 million people having 140 conversations and interactions about World Cup in the first few days of play. Twitter has brought back country-based hashtagging just for this event and millions of tweets, retweets and favourites (especially for athletes) are happening per day. Twitter also unleashed a ‘World Cup of Tweets‘ and users are prompted to get in on the #worldcup2014 action when they login to their accounts.

Just like on field stories drive success, so do social stories around advertisers, personalities and brands. Here are 5 stories that drove traffic this week in the first few days of the World Cup:

• Biggest Uh Oh: Every major social event has an ‘oops’ moment – American Airlines captured the Twitter, Reddit, Facebook, Instagram and generally, the digital world after showing a picture of a giraffe when referencing Africa. (Africa doesn’t have giraffes.).The biggest social media gaffe included an apology but the apology incorporated a typo. Finally, they got it right in the second apologetic tweet.

• The Social Media Stars: He’s a star on field and off and Christian Ronaldo is proving to be the most popular social media athlete of this World Cup. Ronaldo had 117.4 million users on unique platforms, as measured by Forbes. His tweet and Facebook ‘like’ worthiness has been a hit with fans and as a result, is increasingly powerful for his sponsors, like Tag Hauer. (Who else tops the list? Check them out here: https://www.forbes.com/sites/andersonantunes/2014/06/17/the-top-15-social-networking-superstars-of-the-2014-fifa-world-cup/)
• Bigger but Less blatant? Brand success for Beats, newly acquired by Apple, as athletes opt for Beats despite free swag from Sony. “When fans see World Cup athletes wearing Beats in their downtime, by choice, it has as much impact as seeing them lace their Adidas [shoes] or sip a sponsored beverage,” Ellen Petry Leanse, a marketing strategist and former Apple and Google executive, told Reuters.
• Power of Pictures: The images from fans and from outlets like Getty show the range of emotion filling Brazil and countries around the world. The Google doodle for one day of the World Cup wasn’t one of the winning images: it featured a Brazilian slum, known as a favela, as a symbol of the World Cup. The social divide and economic issues, ranging from teen prostitution to extreme poverty, have been part of the discourse on these games. The Google doodle was an accurate reflection for many as a reality of life in Brazil but was not well received by many who took to Twitter and beyond to share their opinion. (One user suggested if Google thought a favela was so trendy, they could just ‘move their head office there!’.)
• Blast from the Past: The BBC compiled a worthy list of 100 World Cup moments from the present and past games.

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