Battle of the Grand Slam - France vs. England

We decided to monitor conversation from the start of the semi-finals till the day after the final had taken place. The overall volume goes to the French Open, which generated 15.8% more conversation than Wimbledon. Another fascinating thing is that the men generated more conversation than the women. The reason for these changes in volume might yet have a reason...

If you can remember, you will know, particularly from the ladies' side, that the top seeds of both tournaments fell out quite early, rather unexpectedly. For the French Open, I was monitoring Caroline Wozniacki, only to be shocked at her early exit. Conversation around Caroline plummeted! The same happened with Wimbledon with the William sisters, amongst others, falling out quite early as well. As a result, we had quite a number of not-so-famous tennis players make a name for themselves during the tournament. In both tournaments, the women generated 60% less conversation than the men. 

The men on the other hand had all four top seeds in the French Open, whilst the only surprise in Wimbledon was that of Jo-Wilfried Tsonga reaching the semi finals ahead of Roger Federer (whom he knocked out in the quarter finals).  Having the top players in the world in the finals stage of the competition seems to have affected the volume of conversation.

Here are the stats for the actual finals:

French Open Women's Final: 5 752 mentions. Winner Na Li - 666 mentions (1% more than runner up Francesca Schiavone)

Wimbledon Women's Final: 3 614 mentions. Winner Petra Kvitova - 2 362 mentions (94% more than runner up Maria Sharapova)

French Open Men's Final: 5 827 mentions. Winner Raphael Nadal - 1 553 mentions (73% less than runner up Roger Federer)

Wimbledon Men's Final: 4 219 mention. Winner Novak Djokovic - 1 390 (53% less than the runner up Rafael Nadal)

So it seems that France has won this battle. In both tournaments Twitter was at the heart of sharing the content which continues to push the dominance social media has in spreading the exposure of a brand (in this case the tournaments in consideration).

What was particularly interesting in the men's outcomes was the value that lies in a personal reputation. In both finals it seems that those with stronger personal reputations generated more volume than the actual winners. How encouraging to know that people still support their favorite even when they do not end up winning. Can we translat this personal brand loyalty into the marketing world? Why do people seem so fickle when it comes to brand loyalty? Could it be that brands are not personal enough and if they did in fact have a persona that consumers could relate to, they would fare far better in terms of loyalty? Just a thought... Let us know what you think?

The next few months are going to be quiet on the tennis calendar, but I look forward to seeing what our next Grand Slam, the American Open will produce. Will it be able to trump it's European counterparts? We'll have to wait and see...

GH