According to foreign economic reports quoted by Taiwan economic daily, Nike, the sporting goods manufacturer of the United States, is not a sponsor of the world cup in South Africa. However, its popularity with fans is far ahead of the official sponsor Adidas.

According to the Nielsen Co survey, in the month before the opening of World Cup 11, almost 1/3 of the relevant discussions on the Internet were Nike, which is two times the number of Adidas designated by the FIFA official designated partner.

Nelson tracked the Internet English message from May 7th to June 6th, and 30.2% of them mentioned Nike, which was the most frequently mentioned company in the world cup discussion, and Adidas ranked 14.4%.

In the 32 World Cup South Africa World Cup, nine teams will come out wearing Nike jerseys, including the US team; Adidas will sponsor 12 teams such as Germany.

Burmaster, vice president of Nielsen's public relations department, said: "online social media makes such assault marketing easier, because social networking sites are very infectious."

Nelson tracked blogs, Internet discussion areas, video sites, Facebook and micro-blog (http://t.sina.com.cn) to search for English messages about the world cup.

The subjects were ten world cup official sponsors and 20 competitors.

The so-called assault marketing refers to the fact that it is not an activity sponsor, but it links the activity with the company's image through the advertising campaign, and imperceptibly lets the consumer think that the activity has cooperation with the company.

Such advertising campaigns often aim at international sports events such as the world cup and the Olympic Games.

Nike produced a "future writing" advertising film featuring actors including England football star Rooney and Portuguese star C lo, who won more than 14 million 600 thousand hits on a famous video website.

By contrast, Adidas's Star Wars World Cup advertising campaign was starred by British soccer star Beckham, who spent more than 2 million 800 thousand hits on the same website for a week.

Not all sponsors' advertising campaigns are lost to non sponsors.

Coca-Cola ranked third in Nielsen's survey, noting that the rate is almost five times that of Pepsi.

The VISA card is fifth, and it is 15 times the number of MasterCard in the world cup discussions.

The number of sponsors mentioned by SONY is seven times that of Panasonic and ten times that of PHILPS.