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Two positives of Cross Promotion are that if your company will be able to reach out to other people with different interests and other ages. Another positive is that your name will got out of their social media and the internet for even more exposure.Also the cost of promotion is less if you do cross promotion.

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Cross-promotion is a form of marketing promotion where customers of one product or service are targeted with promotion of a related product. A typical example is cross-media marketing of a brand, for example Oprah Winfrey's promotion on her television show of her books, magazines and website.

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Sports are an inherently social activity, so brands like Nike are a natural fit when it comes to social media marketing.
To find out how the sports giant makes the most of this opportunity, I thought it would be interesting to see how it uses Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest and Google+.

This post is the latest in a series of blogs that have taken a similar look at major brands including ASOS, Tesco, Red Bull, Cadbury and McDonalds...

Facebook

Like most global brands Nike has separate Facebook pages for each of its product categories. This includes golf, snowboarding and FuelBand, as well as two football pages - one for the American version of the sport and one for the version everyone else in the world plays.

As far as I can tell the latter actually has the most fans of any of the Nike pages (17.2m), followed by the main corporate account (12.3m) and American football (2.4m).

Most of the dedicated sports pages are updated on a daily basis with videos or images, while the corporate page is updated about once a week.

The social teams are obviously lucky in that they have a huge number of athletes around whom they can create and share content, so the global football page displays a huge amount of content featuring the likes of Cristiano Ronaldo and Andres Iniesta, as well as a lot of product-related posts.

At the moment much of the content is around Nike's "Be Mercurial" campaign to promote its Mercurial Vapor IX boots, including video clips of personalised boots that customers have bought online through NIKEID.

Interestingly the product-related content appears to get more interactions than posts featuring players, with one photo gallery of new boots attracting more than 35,000 'likes' and almost 1,000 comments.

Similarly, the American football page is updated several times per week with a focus on athletes and products.

Nike is well known for running major branding campaigns, so its Facebook pages don't feature the smaller competitions and sales promotions that we're used to seeing from consumer brands.

Instead it uses its social channels to cross-promote larger marketing campaigns, such as the #MyTimeIsNow initiative that it ran last year during the European Championships.

This year it is using the hashtag #MakeItCount as away of trying to encourage sports teams to train together using its Nike+ products, which are discussed further down this post.

Twitter

As with Facebook, Nike has individual feeds for its subsidiary brands, including golf, basketball, FuelBand, Nike.com and football.

For each of the feeds the focus is very much on responding to @mentions rather than pushing out marketing messages, and the rate at which some of the more popular accounts respond to users is quite astounding.

For example, the Nike.com feed (766,000 followers) responds to more than 100 tweets per day regarding order queries, stock information and product details.

It ranks alongside ASOS as one of the most active customer service feeds I've seen so far, and on top of that the sports brand also operates a Nike Support feed to resolve product questions and technical needs. This dedicated customer service feed also answers hundreds of questions per day.

The sports feed are also good at responding to @mentions, though not to the same level as the Nike.com or Support accounts. For example, the Nike Football feed is on hand to give out training advice, product information or encouragement to other users.

Similarly, Nike Running responds to a huge number of people to discuss their training schedule and give motivational advice.

Personally I'm a big fan of Nike's Twitter strategy and would like to see more brands adopt a similar approach. It would obviously require a sizeable investment, but it goes a long way in turning customers into brand advocates.

For example, if you've just bought a pair of Nike football boots and the brand then personally responds to you with training advice and a few words of encouragement, then you're definitely going to consider that brand when you buy sports products in future and may even recommend them to your friends.

Nike has also achieved some notable successes by using Twitter as a central tool in its marketing campaigns. During the London Olympics it managed to outshine official sponsor Adidas with a massive billboard and social campaign around the capital.

Nike eschewed the usual celebrity endorsements in a campaign that celebrated everyday athletes. It bought up hundreds of billboards around the city featuring the hashtag '#findgreatness'.

Adidas, which spent tens of millions of pounds to be an official sponsor, ran a campaign featuring Team GB athletes and the hashtag '#takethestage'.

According to Socialbakers' CheerMeter there were more than 16,000 tweets associating Nike with the word Olympic between 27 July and 2 August compared to 9,295 for Adidas.

Furthermore. Nike attracted 166,718 new Facebook fans during the Games versus 80,761 for Adidas.

Data from Experian Hitwise shows that Nike achieved a 6% growth in its number of Facebook fans and a 77% boost in engagement on its Facebook page compared to 2% and 59% respectively for Adidas.

But while that was certainly a social success, Nike also got its wrists slapped by the Advertising Standards Authority last year after footballers Wayne Rooney and Jack Wilshere tweeted marketing messages without stating that they had been paid by Nike to do so.

Pinterest

Nike has clearly researched the demographic profile of the average Pinterest user, as the only account it has established is for Nike Women.

It has created 10 boards and amassed a respectable 9,900 followers, however all of its pins are product related and link back to official Nike websites.

Nike isn't alone in only pinning its own content - John Lewis also applies this tactic - but personally I think it's a missed opportunity.

Pinterest is a great opportunity to develop the brand identity and create pinboards that reflect the company's values, but Nike is essentially using it as an extension of its product catalogue.

Google+

As far as I can tell Nike only has one official Google+ page and it gives it the bare minimum of attention.

It is updated around once per week and all of the content is repurposed from Facebook. As with most brands the level of interaction with the posts is extremely limited, with each one attracting a few hundred +1s and tens of comments.

Overall it's fairly uninspiring, but no worse than most of the other Google+ pages I've looked at as part of this series of posts.

Considering the amount of athletes that Nike has on its payroll, it should try to take advantage of G+'s unique features by hosting hangouts and Q&As.

Nike+

Not only does Nike do a decent job of marketing itself using the four main social networks, but it has also taken the time to establish its own unique social platform through Nike+.

It now has more than six million members that use it an average of three times per week.

Since 2010 Nike has developed a range of training products that are digitally linked using the Nike+ FuelBand. Users can then accumulate 'NikeFuel' points and set themselves goals or compete against other users.

It has proved to be a hugely successful product for Nike as it taps into the social aspect of sports by allowing users to track their progress using an iPhone app and share their progress online.

There are dedicated Facebook and Twitter accounts for NikeFuel which are tied into the #MakeItCount hashtag.

It also allows Nike to run novel campaigns, such as the 'Fuel your team' initiative that currently allows users to show support for their favourite basketball team by earning them NikeFuel points.

Having used a Nike FuelBand before I feel the product is a victory for marketing over usability, but even so it means Nike has a product and a social network that millions of people use on a daily basis which is an extremely powerful tool for driving brand loyalty.

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How Nike uses Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest and Google+

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Sports are an inherently social activity, so brands like Nike are a natural fit when it comes to social media marketing. To find out how the sports giant makes the most of this opportunity, I thought it would be interesting to see how it uses Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest and Google+.

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By now, I'm sure most of you have seen the cross promotion of Mountain Dew (excuse me, "Mtn Dew"), Doritos and Modern Warfare 3. For those of you that haven't, let me quickly sum it up: you gain double XP for a specific amount of time as you purchase these Pepsi products. The problem is three fold. To begin, the most obvious is that it promotes poor health, encouraging people to eat and drink more of this crap in order for a small XP boost. The second is also quite clear, and the one that has been most discussed; the use of external cash to gain a direct advantage in competitive multiplayer. If this were the true Infinity Ward, I wouldn't be quite so worried, as Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare was an example of an incredibly well balanced competitive first person shooter with a leveling mechanic. However, I can not be sure that this won't hurt the initial balance of the game, though as a realist, it is easy to see that the actual XP wont hurt the gameplay in the long run. What it will hurt is the gamer.

But my biggest issue lies in the image this presents. We, as gamers, have collectively fought the "fat nerd" stereotype for as long as games have existed. It appeared as if we were finally getting over that one. Then some ridiculous promotion such as this will come along and reinforce that stereotype in the minds of parents and marketers. I remember the launch of Halo 3 and the Mountain Dew variety of "Game Fuel." That was annoying, and did little to improve our image, but I don't think it hurt quite as much. With this, the insinuation that gamers will purchase anything to "improve" their game hurts a lot, for several reasons.

To start, through Pepsi, Activision is essentially insulting its customers. They are selling you a product that is not only bad for your health, but something that you don't actually need. Leveling up in the Call of Duty games, or any game for that matter, is not that hard. In fact it is already designed as a reward for your growing skill and your way of learning the game. Even if you're bad the game compensates. Double XP is a backhanded insult to those willing to purchase it, a base insinuation that you should purchase these products because they won't make you better, but they will give you the neater toys without you having to earn them. A Double XP Weekend does not share this trait as it is open to everyone, and thus the playing field, the balance, is kept level. Activision is basically saying their customers are really that gullible, that this is a promotion that gamers will go for, because they don't care about skill or earning something when they can spend an extra $5 or $10 to get something that much quicker.

This promotion is further disturbing because it basically tells us that they legitimately don't care about their consumers, viewing them not as people, but as money. A lot of corporations do this for sure. It is the reason they exist. But it is rather insulting to see it be done so blatantly. As Paul Tassi said in his thought provoking article at Forbes, this crosses a line. We, as gamers, already knew we were being exploited. We clearly have disposable income enough to buy $60 games, so we are targeted for campaigns like this. But it insults our intelligence, and not just our skill.

This cash in comes after the almost equally insulting Call of Duty: Elite service, which Activision scrambled to make viable; in the long run saving the purchasers of the service $10 (off of the already overpriced DLC packs), which they can presumably be expected to use to buy Mountain Dew and Doritos. Even the pre-order bonuses that EA was going to offer with Battlefield 3 weren't this egregious. They might give some small advantage, but in a game like Call of Duty, XP is essentially the core of the game. It is why people play.

Don't get me wrong though, I am under no illusion; this will not break the game. Some people will level up artificially, but that isn't the real problem. Again, the problem is how much it uses and insults customers of Activision. Other companies have made similar moves, but none have ever come so close to affecting a game though. EA had a cross promotion with Dr. Pepper, on all their bottles you could get in game items. However, none of these items really affected a multiplayer mode quite so much as XP does. In fact, few if any, of the items really did (a new car for Shift 2 or an armor item for Shepard in Mass Effect 2). I'm okay with those promotions, because they don't break the game, and also because they were available on the Diet varieties of the soda, which, while not much better, were at least trying. Further, while they offer items for Battlefield 3, these items are presumably not game defining like additional XP is. Plus, frankly, Dr. Pepper does not present the same image of the fat nerd locked in his basement with a case of Mountain Dew and Doritos. And as previously stated, at least the World of Warcraft and Halo 3 varieties of Mountain Dew Game Fuel did not affect the games.

So far I have refrained from what I feel to be the worst part of this exploitation: the fact that this marketing campaign is wholly unnecessary and reeks of sheer greed on the part of Activision. While it may seem hard to blame them, they are a corporation after all, and they exist to make money, it does not make it any less scummy. People have called this "selling out." While that is accurate, it is also unrealistic. A companies job is essentially to sell out. The problem lies in their inability to show restraint, to hurt their image and the image of their customer, likely in the long run, in the chase for the dollar in the short run. Call of Duty: Black Ops sold $360 Million worth of copies in its first 24 hours. To put those sales in perspective, that is $60 million dollars more in one day than Microsoft's mega release, Gears of War 3, sold in its entire launch week. Modern Warfare 3 is apparently on pace to break Black Ops' first day sales. So this just seems like a totally unnecessary cash in and unrestrained greed.

It is a culmination of everything that Activision has been doing over the years. We know that Activision CEO Bobby Kotick wants to exploit his franchises. Tony Hawk and Guitar Hero are proof enough of that. As soon as competition was introduced to those franchises, they collapsed as Skate and Rock Band appeared. Activision clearly didn't learn, as the promotions for Modern Warfare 3 continue to grow while the game appears to be mostly stagnant. Don't get me wrong, I still want to play Modern Warfare 3, but I don't think I want to play it online, and I'm certainly reluctant to buy it new now. Frankly, I don't want to support this kind of clearly harmful business model, one that does not respect me or the games I want to play.

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Activision & Pepsi Marketing is Bad for Gamers, and Not Just Their Health

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By now, I'm sure most of you have seen the cross promotion of Mountain Dew (excuse me, "Mtn Dew"), Doritos and Modern Warfare 3. For those of you that haven't, let me quickly sum it up: you gain double XP for a specific amount of time as you purchase these Pepsi products.

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the cooperative marketing by two or more companies of one another's products.

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Cross-promotion is a form of marketing promotion where customers of one product or service are targeted with promotion of a related product. A typical example is cross-media marketing of a brand, for example Oprah Winfrey's promotion on her television show of her books, magazines and website.