By Chabi Setsubi, Kavish Harisanker and Dominique Baxewanos
When Bafana Bafana last stepped onto the field in a FIFA World Cup back in 2010, Instagram didn’t exist yet. It would launch later that year. What we now know as X was still Twitter. TikTok was the sound clocks made.
In 2010, fans engaged with the tournament through TV, radio, newspapers and magazines. Fast forward 16 years, and the media landscape looks vastly different. Fans watched this year’s tournament on one screen while keeping the conversation flowing on another. As the premier sponsor of Bafana Bafana, Standard Bank had to be part of that conversation too.
“Standard Bank stands for partnering with people and organisations on their individual journeys of growth,” says Bonga Sebesho, Head of Sponsorship at Standard Bank. “What better platform than football to tell this story? Bafana Bafana, and all the national teams, are each on their own continuous journeys of growth. A journey of growth does not end at a destination but rather each season, each tournament is an opportunity to grow. We saw this with Bafana Bafana at the World Cup, and we’ll see this again as Banyana Banyana starts their WAFCON campaign.”
A sporting event that the audience is already invested in opens up many opportunities for brands. The data from Standard Bank’s campaign reveals how brand sponsorship in sport has evolved far beyond a logo on a jersey.
Be a fan among the fans
Rather than showing up as an aloof corporate sponsor, the VML South Africa team behind Standard Bank’s social media accounts made a conscious decision to engage like a member of the online community. Standard Bank showed up as Bafana’s #1 cheerleader, backing the team regardless of the outcome of a particular match and championing a message of growth. Leaning into humour proved to be one of the most effective ways to get this right. Brands that can let loose a little over a cultural moment have a chance to win fans over with surprise and delight.
Embrace some flexibility
Fans soon took notice and welcomed the brand into their space. The key was to engage in a natural, authentic way. It became evident that in today’s social media landscape, effective sponsorship is not created by placing a brand into every conversation, but by understanding the emotion of the moment and giving supporters a relevant way to participate in it.
Lean heavily into data and strategy
As much as the content itself felt off-the-cuff, a lot of planning went on behind the scenes. The team set out to improve brand sentiment, increase share of voice and engagement rate, and help land the sponsorship story. These were key indicators in determining what the plan would be and what success would look like.
Real-time data analysis proved crucial. Football conversation changes by the minute, so content that works the day before a match may not be appropriate during the match, and the content needed after a victory is very different from what is required after an emotional defeat. The campaign demonstrated the importance of treating social listening as a live decision-support tool rather than only a retrospective reporting exercise.
Data analytics also revealed the real conversation drivers – what the audience was invested in at any given moment and how the brand could enter the conversation authentically. In the neutral sentiment category, the team identified opportunities for proactive content. And in the broader conversation, they looked for moments to engage with the overall strategic message of backing Bafana Bafana no matter what.
Underpinned by rigorous strategy, the comments, jokes and reactions the public saw could look like pure vibes.
Make it interactive
Being a premier sponsor also gives brands the authority to generate engagement. Interactive, gamified content offers a way to engage that feels fun and appropriate. Polls, quizzes, predictions and emoji-led interactions repeatedly outperformed more conventional informational updates. It showed that audiences were not only interested in receiving match updates; they wanted opportunities to demonstrate their knowledge and feel involved in the campaign.
Bafana IQ content stood out on X. A Facebook quiz asking, “Think you have elite ball knowledge?” generated approximately 201 000 views and 2 461 engagements, making it one of the clearest examples of how interactive content could combine scale with active participation. Together with the community “ball hunt” challenge, these formats contributed more than a third of the interactions recorded across Facebook and Instagram during the reporting period.
Different content for different objectives
When evaluating metrics during a sports tournament, it’s important to remember that what is considered the “best-performing” post will depend on the campaign objective for that post. A reach-led announcement and a community-led quiz may both be successful, but they are performing different roles.
Over Bafana Bafana’s World Cup campaign, paid amplification gave some of the game-announcement content very high visibility, but the engagement generated was relatively modest compared with the number of views. By contrast, some of the more organically distributed participation posts achieved lower overall reach but much stronger engagement efficiency.
That produced an important distinction between reach and resonance: a post can be widely seen without necessarily inspiring an active response.
Build a trusting agency-client relationship
For a live social media campaign to be effective, there has to be a sense of trust and collaboration between the client and the agency. Standard Bank and VML had a robust “war room” where the relevant client stakeholders sat down with the agency team that would be executing the plan. Everyone understood the overall message, the objectives, what success would look like, and what the parameters were. So, when the time came to execute, the team felt free to have fun together, which was reflected in the work.
Ultimately, the campaign demonstrated the power of sports sponsorship to connect with audiences around a major cultural moment in the social media age. “Football is the shared heartbeat that unites South Africa. It is by far South Africa’s most followed sport and passion point, and Bafana Bafana is the biggest national team,” says Sebesho. “Regardless of what club one supports, Bafana Bafana commands us to rally under one flag.”
Dominique Baxewanos is a Creative Director, Chabi Setsubi is Head of Community Management, and Kavish Harisanker is a Senior Data Analyst at VML South Africa.