The FIFA World Cup 2022 is the most important sports competition in the world. And brands play too. With millions of people hooked to their screens, it’s an excellent opportunity for companies to deploy all their branding strategies and position inside the consumers’ minds.

This opportunity is significant for brands targeting both soccer fans and their community.
At this event people get together for more than to watch a soccer match. It’s a moment to meet, eat, share, and enjoy with family and friends, whether you are a Foot or a Foody, or both.
DiDi realized there was an opportunity to target their message to speak to the “Not-really-into-soccer” fans as well.

To score big, DiDi needed to create a strong brand recognition that would help them stand out as a food delivery player in Mexico. A very competitive market, in even more competitive times.

Expanding a message means communicating with more people in more places. DiDi needed to open new digital channels with innovative creative formats that would resonate with its potential users. The online campaigns had to complement their offline branding efforts which included numerous above-the-line campaigns, TV ads and Out-of-Home (OOH) advertising.

Didi Foods’ branding digital team worked closely with Winclap’s branding team to come up with a playbook that would allow them to expand their brand message to a broader online audience.

Time was critical to plan and deploy campaigns around the World Cup, since the event lasts only a few weeks. Together they launched a complete strategy of awareness campaigns that included traditional digital formats in channels like Meta, Youtube, TikTok and DV360; combined with innovation actions in Twitter, Yahoo Ads  Xbox and Spotify, using new creative formats like playable ads, polls, audio and CTV video ads.

A diversified media strategy allowed DiDi to reach more users, with a playful and fun creative approach, with diverse touchpoints and a repeated brand message. Users interacted with DiDi’s brand while they were watching, while they were listening, while they were browsing, and most importantly, while they were hungry.
Working with Winclap’s Branding team, DiDi could deal with only one partner to open all these channels, which reduced bureaucracy and saved time. 

Once campaigns were launched, DiDi worked closely with Winclap to measure the performance of every initiative. Both teams used surveys and brand lift studies in TikTok, Yahoo, Twitter, Meta, Youtube and Spotify to measure how much ad recall, favorability, and message association (among other metrics) had been affected by each campaign. The team used Nielsen’s Brand Lift Study Surveys (BLS),a global leader in audience insights and analytics.  These surveys measured the difference in attitudes between two audiences (an exposed and a control group) to determine the effects of advertising exposure. In other words, they proved that digital advertising campaigns affected brand awareness, perception, and purchase intent. Like watching tape after each game, DiDi Food and Winclap teams analyzed campaign results and extracted insights for future branding initiatives:

• Diversifying and innovating with new digital channels generate greater lifts in mid and lower-funnel metrics.
• Channel diversification carries an opportunity to improve upper funnel metrics as well: when opening a new channel there is a greater chance to find a fresh audience that has not heard about your brand yet.
• Ad placement, timing, and repetition matter. Timely, relevant and frequent brand message raise awareness. A diversified strategy, mixing traditional and non-traditional channels is necessary in order to have a full-funnel approach.

The campaigns resulted in:

• Expanded messaging to a digital audience of 19 million users
  
• 835MM impressions
• 83% increase increase in average video completion rate (compared to previous video campaigns).

On average, including all channels, this strategy improved branding metrics by:

• A lift of 4 points in Ad Recall

• A lift of 1 point in variety perception

• A lift of 2 points in favorability

• A lift of 15 points in message association

• A lift of 26 points in preference