South Africa's good news virtually shines

12 May 2010

"Shine 2010 has been successful in helping to shape perceptions online, ahead of what is South Africa's most prominent opportunity to shine on the world stage." Vicki Trehaeven, FNB's head of 2010 marketing was commenting on the more than 1.5 million impressions* across its good news website and various social networks.

The site has been on a steady growth curve over the last 18 months, but has seen a massive 1700% increase in daily traffic, since the start of the commencement of the fifth and final ticketing sale phase. On the opening day of the last minute sales phase on April 16, the site received over 14 000 unique visitors, up from around 1 000 impressions a day. Its traffic clearly shows that South Africa and the world, has finally placed the spotlight on the football event.

Trehaeven adds, "Importantly, 76% of the site's traffic is from South Africa, ensuring South Africans are geared to spread the 2010 FIFA World Cup good news, in turn helping to manage perceptions within their own social networks."

International interest

In line with ticket sales, the US, UK and Germany follow South Africa in terms of the geographic split of where traffic is coming from. The breakdown is 6%, 4% and 1% respectively. Shine 2010 has also reached at least a citizen from every country in the world bar five countries.

"Search trends show that interest is around security, accommodation, Bafana Bafana jerseys and news around the airport, roads/SANRAL and stadium updates. That said, the biggest traffic keywords for Shine 2010 are FIFA World Cup tickets that accounts for 8% of all traffic," explains Trehaeven.

Social media key to success

South Africa's good news virtually shines

click to enlarge

Not only has the site itself seen a surge in traffic, but its Flickr account has done extremely well, as web users and picture enthusiasts increasingly search for 2010 World Cup pictures online. Its profile is the top listed hit for a search on the term '2010 World Cup', serving over 2 000 views per day and over 290 000 views in total. The YouTube channel has done well, with just under 500 000 video views in total.

"We encourage South Africans to visit the site and engage with the campaign's various social networks and to be active ambassadors in South Africa's finest moment," concludes Trehaeven.

*Note: these are not unique views, but rather the cumulative sum of all impressions and interactions that are quantified across the various touch points that Shine 2010 controls. These include the website, YouTube and Zoopy (cumulative video views), Facebook (total page impressions), Flickr (total picture views) but exclude Twitter, as it cannot track who is actually viewing its Tweets.

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