Twitter has released a World Cup video encouraging consumers to use the service during the upcoming games.
The video was created by Goodby Silverstein & Partners, which is going to handle a larger brand campaign for Twitter later this year, according to a spokeswoman for the agency. The video introduced a slogan, "Love Every Second," that will likely appear in future brand marketing.
Twitter earlier this year reached out to ad agencies seeking ideas on creative ways to market the service and build the Twitter brand. A Twitter spokesman confirmed that Goodby made the World Cup video but declined to discuss future plans.
Twitter has previously dabbled with agency relationships. The company in 2011 enlisted PR giant Edelman to educate consumers on the virtues of Twitter, though that relationship eventually wound down. In 2012, agency West created a TV ad for Twitter for a Nascar partnership. Twitter has also worked with Interpublic's Huge on a project basis.
Along with the World Cup video by Goodby, which is not slated to appear on TV, the company has introduced features tailored to the Cup, including two hashtags to follow the matches and a re-introduced "hashflag" -- an ability for users to display tiny emblems of the teams with three letters. "Hashflag" activity will then be tallied up for a contest dubbed the "World Cup of Twitter."
Twitter has proven its ability to net significant free exposure with major live events, as it proved most recently with Ellen DeGeneres' selfie at the Oscars. But the company has also been struggling to improve user growth and reach a broader mass of consumers.
During the first quarter, Twitter added 14 million monthly active users, an uptick from the fourth quarter of 2013 but a continued sign of subpar growth next to the tremendous social-networking reach of Facebook. Twitter is eager to lure in new users and attract dormant ones back.
The World Cup is a massive opportunity. It offers an attentive, obsessive audience of die-hard fans in parts of the globe where Twitter has the most room to grow. eMarketer recently estimated that a bulk of Twitter's growth in the next four years would come from emerging markets.
User growth in Brazil, the World Cup host country, is expected to shoot up 37.3% this year. And with the games, Twitter hopes to leverage the wild popularity of star players such as Cristiano Ronaldo, who has 26.6 million followers and is a central part of Nike's marketing push.
Twitter also released a version of its video this morning in Portuguese.