Global Marketing News – 3rd August 2016
Brands gear up for Rio Olympics social media marketing
Companies are looking to social media to make an impact during this month’s Olympic Games in Rio.
According to leading brands, social marketing has moved on dramatically since London’s games in 2012.
Kate Hartman, director of global brand PR for The Coca-Cola Company, says that “London was really just the start of what it meant to be social”, adding that the games in Rio will show “a true ‘Social Olympics’”.
Coco-Cola will be setting up a “real-time marketing” global hub in Brazil, allowing it to create social content in real time.
Meanwhile, Gary Twelvetree from Visa Europe, has said that social is “a bigger focus for Rio”, compared to the games four years ago.
The Olympic Committee has also loosened its regulations regarding who is allowed to run Olympic campaigns as well, with non-official sponsors now allowed to create campaigns around the games, providing they don’t feature the Olympic logo or words such as “Rio”, or “summer” in certain contexts.
WeChat sees strong growth across Asia and Australia
WeChat usage in Asia has shown strong growth since last year.
According to a survey by Global Web Index, WeChat’s growth levels have reached 300% in South Korea, and 150% in the Philippines.
Chief Research Officer at GlobalWebIndex, Jason Mander, said that he was impressed “but not surprised”, due to the versatility of the service.
It is also showing strong growth in Australia where usage increased by 284% since last year, making it the fastest growing messaging app in the country.
Vice President of International Business at Tencent, Poshu Yeung, said that “WeChat provides a safe, interactive and seamless experience”, as it looks to bring together features such as messaging, gaming and media content.
Mobile commerce on the rise in Europe
European smartphone users are using their devices for mobile commerce more than ever, and the number is increasing at a higher than expected rate.
According to ING’s annual international survey around mobile banking, 58% of users purchased something using their smartphone or other mobile device in 2015, and this has increased to 66% this year.
The highest rates of m-commerce usage amongst smartphone users were Turkey with 88%, followed by Italy and Poland on 69%.
However, the strongest growth was seen in France and the Netherlands, which both saw an increase of 16% from last year.
The work by ING also showed the increase in mobile banking, with 82% of people who use a banking service on mobile also shopping with those same devices.
Didi Chuxing and Uber China agree merger
The Chinese taxi-hailing app Didi Chuxing has agreed a merger deal with Uber China, after months of rumours.
The result of the merger is that their combined value will be around 35 billion US dollars, and now means that Didi Chuxing has investment in every large ride-sharing company on earth.
According to Bloomberg, Didi will invest 1 billion US dollars into Uber, whilst Uber themselves will take a 20% stake in the merger.
It has been reported that by getting rid of its unit in the Chinese market, where it has lost an estimated 2 billion US dollars to date, Uber could now be looking to list as a public company.
Meanwhile, this new deal comes not long after the Chinese government proposed new regulations that would make taxi hailing services legal in the country from November.
Nu Dot Co buys .web domain for $135 million
And finally, a company has paid 135 million US dollars for use of the .web domain.
Nu Dot Co can now offer firms any domain using the .web suffix, after paying over three times the price that was paid for the previous record holder, .shop.
Other bidders included Google and other net registry companies, all of whom have been bidding since 2012 for the rights to use the suffix because so many made offers to run it.
The overseers of the internet’s address system, ICANN, also sold the rights to 16 other TLDs such as .app and .hotel, making 230 million US dollars in total.
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