UK Politics vs Football: How Brands Can Connect with Audiences Around Cultural Moments

In the build up to Men’s Euro’s England vs Spain football game, content consumed about Gareth Southgate was indexing higher than Rishi and Starmer. Surprising insights like this can show how advertisers find a white space not already packed with competitors.

Brands often encounter challenges in planning timely and relevant campaigns. I write this on the eve of England vs. Netherlands in the Euro semi-final. While brands no doubt understand just how passionate England fans are and what a golden opportunity this is to reach them, without a better understanding of contextual associations, like where and how a topic of interest appears within content across the web, campaigns can be run and parameters set in the dark.

This is especially true in a week that has included record breaking British elections and Grand Prix, and second week of a thrilling Wimbledon. The UK’s summer might be disappointing in terms of the weather, but not on the levels of excitement, and people are flocking to their favourite publishers and content providers to stay up-to-date.

By going beyond surface-level observations to dissect audience engagement, readership patterns, and optimal contextual placements within these moments, brands can craft media campaigns that resonate deeply, aligning the brand with topics, communities, and emotions that truly matter and build relationships that last longer than a Summer sports tournament.

As an example, when comparing the two big themes of the last couple of weeks; the UK election versus the Euros, even using a basic comparison looking at the differences in male vs. female audience behaviours we are able to identify several interesting insights which would help with campaign planning.

Using the Teads’ Media Barometer, which draws upon data from over 3,000 of our premium content partners, we are able to identify that males gave a much smaller amount of their “reading time” to British Politics versus how much they’ve given to Football… only really showing an uptick in their readership on the day of the results coming on 5th July.

However, female reading time was much more balanced between these two significant cultural events. The data shows considerably more comparative readership across the final fortnight of the political campaigning cycle, with high points of interest before election day, peaking on the day of the results.

What is interesting is that while both the England manager, Gareth Southgate, and the new Prime Minister, Keir Starmer, have shared very similar amounts of male and female readership during the duration of the Euros, we can see that while men have maintained a high level of interest in the new PM since election day, women have rapidly diminished their readership post results day. To the extent that it’s only since the England vs. Denmark game which took them through to the semi-finals that for the first time females have actively read more about Gareth than Sir Keir.

What we do know is that cultural moments involving sports, politics and music can drive traffic, excitement, and pique interest at an incredible speed. At the same time, audiences are at their most engaged, so it’s a prime time to reach them in the right way.

Conversations are more likely to transcend other topic areas too. While ‘Sports’ and ‘Football’ or ‘Soccer’ are unsurprisingly the most likely pages to find content on Gareth Southgate, what is potentially surprising is that ‘Attractions’, ‘Business’ and ‘Finance Industries’, ‘Computing’, ‘Science’ and ‘Travel Locations’ all feature in the top 10 contextual ranking. However, Netherlands doesn’t currently rank at all as one of the top words associated with Gareth Southgate, although no doubt that may change over the next 24 hours.

My personal conclusion on this is that women should get two votes and men should only get one if the election falls in a World Cup or Euros year… but in all seriousness, if brands put in the time to analyse and pinpoint those significant cultural, commercial, and seasonal touchpoints that resonate across any timeframe it will provide a deeper understanding of how different topics and audiences intersect. Instead of chasing trends, brands can dominate key moments and harness the power of shared passion.

By Jamie Toward, Head of Data at Teads UK. Published in Performance Marketing World