1,414% audience growth with content performing 175% above Vietnam’s average engagement rate...

DFL Digital Sports, the content division responsible for media production at the German football league Bundesliga, chose We Create Content as its partner to launch and manage its social media content in Vietnam.

As well as ongoing content social media content strategy, a high intensity social media production schedule and community management, We Create Content produced PR articles for third party media distribution in Vietnam and designed assets for Bundesliga’s offline events.

Monthly scope of work:

• Social media and community management in Vietnam 20-25 social media posts
• Social media video and graphic production in Vietnamese
• Video and graphic localisation from HQ into Vietnamese
• Monthly social media reporting
• Social media content to promote offline activations
• 8 PR articles for media outreach distribution in Vietnam

The challenge

The Bundesliga is one of the world’s most exciting football leagues with the highest number of goals per game. But it’s often an afterthought to the likes of the English Premier League for football fans in Vietnam.

The Bundesliga defined Vietnam as its key market but it had no content in Vietnamese, and 443,000 followers on its Facebook page.

The biggest challenge was to stand out from the English Premier League, La Liga and Serie A by using social media content fuelled by local insight to educate, engage and entertain Vietnamese audiences about Germany’s top flight of football.

Strategy and tactics

From insights gathered by We Create Content’s Pre-launch positioning lab, it was clear that Vietnamese audiences viewed Bundesliga as a highly tactical league and enjoyed the entertainment value of its high scoring matches.

So the strategy for We Create Content’s social media studio was two-fold: create educational and bite-sized content that celebrated the stats, players and goals of the league. This was for the core Bundesliga fans. For mass awareness, and to win over new fans, the strategy was to tap into trending topics in Vietnam, such as pop culture references, Lunar New Year, U23 Football and National Team Tournaments, Mid-Autumn Festivals and other events that were being talked about online. This was to entertain and capture the hearts of new audiences in Vietnam.

Catching local trends

When a Vietnamese rapper was #1 trending on YouTube in Vietnam, We Create Content quickly tapped into the hype to raise awareness of Bundesliga and generate engagements among existing and new fans alike.

In the trending music video, the rapper Den Vau performed with his head poking out of the ocean while spitting the lyrics “how did my raps get so good? It’s a secret”.

Insights from our focus groups in our Pre-launch positioning lab highlighted that Borussia Dortmund striker Marco Reus was considered “handsome” by Vietnamese consumers. With this in mind, the managing editor of the Bundesliga content studio created an image card of Marco Rues with his head poking out of the ocean with a speech bubble that read “why am I so handsome? It’s a secret”.

The post won the highest reach and engagement among all content in Vietnam in the summer of 2019, receiving 18,000 organic reactions within a matter of hours - the perfect way to raise awareness of the Bundesliga to new and young audiences in Vietnam.

Not only were Vietnamese audiences impressed that the Bundesliga was creating content in Vietnam, they were surprised at how “in tune with Vietnamese culture” the football league was.

Harnessing the national pride of Vietnamese football fans

More insights from our Pre-launch positioning lab told us that the Vietnam national football team is known among Vietnamese consumers as the big brother of ASEAN football.

With this insight driving the creative process, We Create Content posted a “good luck” post from Bundesliga a few hours before a World Cup Qualifier with Malaysia that read “Big Brother has arrived”.

Social cards such as this, and one that displayed the text “shall we have Thai hot pot for dinner?” before a match with Thailand, showed a deep understanding of Vietnamese culture on behalf of Bundesliga - it even made it into the newspapers to gain further earned media outreach.

Teaching the stars to speak Vietnamese

Speaking Vietnamese in Vietnam goes a long way. We knew that. So working closely with Bundesliga, We Create Content supported players in learning and speaking Vietnamese phrases for social media content.

This worked well. The “Happy Lunar New Year” wishes won a reach on Facebook of 743,907, with 80,963 engagements from 3,118 social media shares. Cost Per Engagement for posts such as this one are among the lowest at 0.00006 Euros and earned more than 260,000 video views.

“Good luck under 23s” won a reach on Facebook of 652,000 with 83,000 engagements from 4,680 social shares. Its CPE was 0.00005 Euros and it won 239,614 video views.

This “Speaking Vietnamese” content series has generated many earned media spots in channels such as Baomoi, Vietnamplus, An ninh thu do, Kenh14, Bongda24h, Bongdaplus, VTV, Zing News, Dan Viet and Thethaovanhoa, to name a few.

The results

Total Vietnamese social media content pieces: 368

Number of Vietnamese-language Videos: 102

Total Unique Users from Vietnam on the Bundesliga Facebook Page: 6.7m (up from 443,000)
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Total Engagements of Bundesliga Vietnamese Facebook content:** 1,889,850

Total Reactions, Comments, Shares of Vietnamese content: 798,899

Average Post Engagement Rate of Vietnamese content: 10.49% (compared to Vietnam’s Average Engagement Rate according to We Are Social: 3.81%)

PR Articles for Media Distribution in Vietnam: 103

Bundesliga won an uplift of 1,414% in new Vietnam users on Facebook (from 443,000 to 6,710,000) since partnering with We Create Content in Vietnam.

With engagement rates 175% more than Vietnam’s Facebook averages, it’s safe to say that Bundesliga has engaged its Vietnamese audiences in an effective way. 

It won the brand countless column inches as earned media, as well as the ability to drive this newfound social audience from online to offline at two successful events - the DeutschlandFest in Hanoi and the Bundesliga Penalty Shootout Arena in Ho Chi Minh City, in which 400 Bundesliga fans attended to compete and spectate in a penalty shoot-out competition. The winning team won an all-expenses paid trip to watch a Bundesliga game in Germany. 

Since our work with Bundesliga, the league went on to sign a new broadcast deal with NextMedia in Vietnam.