The Soccer World Cup in Germany this summer will not just be a fight among the world’s top football teams, but between Adidas’ conventional mass-marketing approach and Nike’s new digital, viral marketing strategy. As the official sponsor of the games, Adidas is spending $200 million on an all out mass-marketing blitz. Meanwhile, Nike has partnered with Google in an attempt to create a social network for soccer fans at “Joga.com.” The ambitious project will be rolled out to 140 countries in 14 languages and models the successful MySpace. Soccer fans can set up their own blogs, swap videos, chat, upload pictures, get news, create their own online clubs, get access to exclusive interviews with Nike’s stable of soccer stars, etc. Joga.com is named after the Brazilian phrase “joga bonito”, or “play,” and is available through invitation only. Even if Nike will only reach one percent of the audience of MySpace, they will be in good shape. Consider these staggering statistics about MySpace (reported by Steve Rubel): It is the largest online social networking portal on the web, with 61 + million registered users, it’s the second largest destination on the web, by page views, it splits 50.2% male, 49.8% female, and attracts 220,000 new registrants daily. During the time you read this post, 150 new members signed up on MySpace. You can’t blame Nike for trying to get into this social network space. I’ll be rooting for team U.S., team Sweden and Nike this summer!

One of my favorite sources of consumer opinion is PlanetFeedback, a public clearing house for customer complaint letters. Occasionally, a customer sends a letter of complement to PlanetFeedback. I did a search for one of my favorite brands, Starbucks, and found that they had over 100 letters of complements! Over one hundred Starbucks customers have had a good enough experience that they took the time to log on to PlanetFeedback, open an account, and write about the positive brand experience for the world to read! And that’s not all. Anyone can write a comment to a letter, much like anyone can write a comment to this blog entry. Most of the comments to the complaint letters at PlanetFeedback are written by other customers who are blowing off steam about similar problems. Not in Starbucks’ case. Most of the customer complaint letters have comments by regular Starbucks employees who weigh in to defend their employer!

Take this letter about an inconsistency in Starbucks pricing: A customer argues that a Tall latte with a second shot of espresso is more expensive at the Starbucks in her airport than a Grande, which has two shots of espresso. Both comments to the letter starts with, “I work for Starbucks and…” One of them is by a part-time employee. They explain that this must be an isolated case at this particular airport location because the extra shot of espresso is not normally that expensive. How about that for devoted brand ambassadors? I don’t know if Starbucks has an organized program to mobilize its employees to defend the brand in online forums, or if it’s a spontaneous outpouring of support for a brand they love. All I know is that no other brand that I know of have as many complement letters on PlanetFeedback and no other brand is defended as tenaciously by its own employees.

Think about the brand you work for: Do you have customer evangelists writing about positive brand experiences at PlanetFeedback? Do you monitor complaints at these kinds of sites? Do you have an army of employee brand ambassadors ready to defend the brand or explain the situation when you get negative consumer generated stories?

Absolut vodka is probably the best brand a government agency ever created (every bottle you buy benefits the taxpayers of my native Sweden!). Leave it to the Swedish government agents to crack code of successful product placement.