10 June 2014

Canada’s Women’s National Team is hoping a trip to Vancouver will be a taste of things to come as they get set to take on Germany in Women’s International Friendly action on Wednesday 18 June at BC Place.

Head Coach John Herdman is assembling a 22-player squad in the site of the final of the FIFA Women’s World Cup Canada 2015TM for the first of two games they’ll play in 2014 on the west coast.

NOTE: A media call will be held with Canada's Head Coach John Herdman on Thursday - time to be confirmed.

“If you want to win a [FIFA Women’s] World Cup at home, you’re going to have to beat these teams. You’re going to find them on your road to the finals somewhere,” said Herdman. “The more we can learn about those teams and learn about ourselves with those teams, it’s only going to put us in better stead.”

There are only a handful of changes to the squad that played in Winnipeg against USA early in May. Veteran defenders Emily Zurrer and Marie-Eve Nault are making their return, as is forward Christina Julien. Julien will be back in the squad for the first time in a year when she was in the squad when Canada hosted the USA rematch at BMO Field in Toronto, ON on 3 June 2013.

The last time Canada played Germany was in 2013 when they lost 1:0 in Paderborn, GER. Canada has never beaten Germany.

“When we played them in Germany we had an experimental squad with a different way of playing,” said Herdman. “We were developing and this year we’re trying to improve and to get closer to where it’s going to look like when we’re in a [FIFA Women’s] World Cup.”

The team will begin training in Vancouver on Friday 13 June in advance of the game that kicks off at 22.00 ET/19.00 PT.

The game will be carried live on Sportsnet One and fans can get full coverage across Canada Soccer’s platforms. Live updates will be available on Twitter @CanadaSoccerEN and @CanadaSoccerFR and CanadaSoccerTV will have post-match interviews and highlights.

About Canada Soccer

Canada Soccer, in partnership with its membership and its partners, provides leadership in the pursuit of excellence in soccer, both at the national and international levels. Canada Soccer not only strives to lead Canada to victory, but also encourages Canadians to a life-long passion for soccer. For more details on Canada Soccer, visit the official website at canadasoccer.com

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Brands Will Not Conquer World Cup Marketing By Relying on Network TV

by Malcolm Cox, May 1, 2014, 12:20 PM

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digital, soccer, sports, tv

As excitement—frenzy in many places—starts to whip up as the soccer-loving world converges in Brazil in mid-June for the next World Cup tournament, brands are salivating as always at the branding and marketing opportunity that such a mega-sporting event affords.

Many brands like Nike and Coca-Cola have been perennial supporters of arguably the global sporting world’s most popular event, but with every succeeding tournament, more and more brands are taking advantage of the platform. But, like with the Super Bowl, many brands are defaulting to an over-reliance on the glittery platform of big-budget multi-million dollar in-game network television commercials. It is somewhat befuddling that many advertisers enamored with the broad reach and the presumed consumer engagement that big iconic global sporting extravaganzas offer are still approaching their media plans in 2014 with a 2004 mindset.

While running high-production value spots during the big games will definitely get your brand on the stage, complementing it with a sizable, highly strategic and hyper-targeted digital ad plan that launches months in advance of the big event will actually deliver the level of impact and ROI that brands should expect, even demand from these opportunities. So, those of you mired in the old thinking with little or perfunctory regard for this method are in for a rude awakening when your television-heavy media plans don’t fulfill the pre-ordained brand KPIs.

Because if an advertisers are actually doing due diligence in terms of best practices for leveraging the World Cup, they would have taken note of the fact that the upcoming 2014 tournament in Brazil represents the first World Cup in a “truly global digital age.” For example, four years ago, Instagram wasn’t even around and Facebook had only 100 million users compared to the 1 billion who use the platform currently. And as recently as 2006, YouTube and Twitter were not yet the behemoths into which they’ve evolved.

Furthermore, the advances in ad technology during the past four years now afford brand marketers the ability to employ precise and refined audience targeting and buying techniques that weren’t available four years ago to find World Cup consumer aficionados on publisher sites. This was not available in 2010.

The Recommendation

Again, network television buys during the tournament should not be the primary emphasis of the media plan. In fact, the run-up months of April-June should get a significant share of the budget and be deemed equally or more important than TV. Because it’s the lead-up to the big event where the greater interest builds, upon which brands could capitalize.

A brief microcosm of these differing schools of thought can be exhibited in the current approaches taken by sporting wear giants Adidas, the official World Cup category sponsor, and arch-rival Nike. If you currently go online, Adidas is not leveraging its official sponsorship in a meaningful way. You can bet, however, that as the tournament approaches in June, Adidas will heavy up on its network TV media weight, but they are missing a golden opportunity now to build the foundational presence that will actually make those network TV dollars much more effective.

Conversely, Coca-Cola gets it right. As they have done with the Olympics, Coke is approaching its FIFA World Cup sponsorship with fully integrated campaigns. They are already running robust promotions including people taking selfies with the actual World Cup trophy as it winds its way through its global tour before arriving in Brazil before the tournament start in June.

Beyond the power of social media, ad technology featuring keyword targeting can now scour billions of URLs on the Internet in 25 different languages based on players and locations. The sculpted, custom segmentation of these audiences greatly inform bidding strategies that generate hyper-targeted messaging and ROI that brands are increasingly expecting.

A great current example of this is Castrol Oil’s success in generating over one million views in the first 24 hours for an entertaining, Samba-backed video pitting race car driver and YouTube star Ken Block against Neymar, one of the expected stars of the World Cup, in an unusual soccer shootout. Keyword tagging was employed to deliver a specific audience. The fact that it went viral was icing on the cake.

Hopefully, other brands will follow Castrol’s lead and start viewing the World Cup, Super Bowl and other iconic sporting events through a broader filter and a longer horizon when it comes to employing their marketing dollars.

UNO News Net

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Tuesday, June 10, 2014

Canada WNT announces roster for 18 June Germany match

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Brands Will Not Conquer World Cup Marketing By Relying on Network TV

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