Tomorrow night Paul Pogba is set to make his second debut for Manchester United following his astonishing 89 million pound transfer from Juventus, who paid just £800,000 compensation for the player in 2012.
While the fee was enough to get football fans talking worldwide alone, the campaign heralding the players second coming to Old Trafford was something that quite simply had not been seen before.
Instead of the standard press conference followed by the clichéd few minutes of the player performing “keep ups” on the pitch, Man United used a multi channel campaign alongside their sponsors.
#Pogback
In this day and age the best and quickest way to spread news is to “leak it”, which is what Man United’s kit supplier Adidas did. A mini music video featuring Paul Pogba, alongside UK Grime artist (and Man United fan) Stormzy was posted and promptly removed – creating a buzz Online.
The video, in which Pogba was cast as a hip-hop star dancing to Stormzy’s rap represented a fusion of music, sport and lifestyle marketing. It also confirmed that social media ‘influencers’ such as Stormzy (who boasts 290,000 YouTube subscribers), can indeed play vital roles in sports digital marketing campaigns.
The official announcement came shortly after, in the form of a cinematic style video, including the hashtag Pogback, intended to consolidate all surrounding conversations.
Paul Pogba would arrive at the clubs Carrington training complex amongst a convoy of Chevrolets, (Man United’s kit sponsor), ensuring that the Chervolet logo was visible on the PR images that everybody wanted.
A busy day for the Social Media Team
The transfer started a frenzy of activity from the clubs official Social Media accounts, generating a mass of response.
The official Man United account tweeted 17 times throughout the day about their new signing, generating a total of 285,646 Retweets and 290,025 likes. The most popular tweet being the Pogba image “home” which was retweeted 89,683 times and liked 82,642 times.
Home. #POGBACK pic.twitter.com/N0irgKbuv5
— Manchester United (@ManUtd) August 8, 2016
The second most engaging was the initial Pogback video tweet, which was Retweeted 51,05 times and liked 42,815 times.
Twitter activity wasn’t limited from and by the official account though, with many Twitter users discussing the transfer. The 24 hours surrounding the news saw a total of 100,082 tweets and 353,256 retweets by 204,428 unique users. The official hashtag: #pogback was used 126,712 times (and mentioned a further 117,093 times).
Instagram:
There were 13 Instagram Posts all featuring Paul Pogba, 6 were videos generating 5,912,000 views and 34,840 comments. The 7 photo posts generated 2,782,000 Likes and 26,112 comments
The most viewed video was a repost of Adidas Football’s “Pogboom”, which generated 1.3 million views and 9,777 comments (the original post was watched 1.1 million times with 7,388 comments).
The most liked and commented photo was a promotional image showing Pogba wearing the Man United shirt for the first time:
Facebook:
3 Posts were published, generating 458000 Reactions and 66,775 shares. The video announcing Pogba’s arrival has been viewed 3.4 million times to date and accounted for 59,009 shares.
The “Once A Red, Always A Red” post generated the most reactions, with 248,000 in total.
What’s Next?
With the amount of attention this transfer generated, the days of the standard unveiling of new arrivals are likely to be limited. We look forward to seeing how a big transfer in the future are announced and the subsequent Online activity.
