The FIFA World Cup is about to kick off in South Africa and official sponsors and partners are lining up to exploit its global opportunities. Brands are turning to six strategies to reap the benefits of match fever.

When the roar of the crowd erupts in Soccer City stadium in Johannesburg on 11 June, brands will be hoping that they will score some gain of their own from that magical moment.

Official FIFA sponsors and partners will be hoping that the millions of pounds that they have invested in that association will work hard for them in South Africa. This year’s World Cup is an opportunity for marketing on a global scale. Brands are taking to the field with six distinct strategies to help them stand out from the crowd.

1. The single-minded marketing strategy
Sabina Heuss, FIFA’s group leader of marketing, communication and research, certainly sells the benefit of an official association as one of the best single ways to engage with consumers. She claims: “The World Cup represents one of the most effective global marketing platforms for reaching out to the consumer.”

For some brands, global sporting events have become their entire marketing strategy. Visa has invested millions of pounds to become an official partner of the World Cup. This, along with its Team 2012 Olympic association “is where the marketing budget is spent”. The financial services brand sees these global events as the best way to achieve brand preference, says Visa Europe senior vice-president of partnership marketing Colin Grannell.

Visa has taken over from MasterCard to be one of the official partners at this year’s event. It kicked off early with its World Cup link, airing an advert in February 2010 across 17 different markets, showing an armchair fan running to the World Cup and scoring a goal, using his Visa card along the way to buy things.

Grannell says the brand will be maintaining a high level of activity right the way through to the last blow of the whistle at the finals. David Atkinson, managing partner at integrated agency Space, says that this strategy “serves those brands well where there is another strong global competitor in the market”. It gives those sponsors the upper hand against their rivals, as an official World Cup association puts them in the top spot, he adds.

For Visa, the aim is to demonstrate that it is the leader in the financial services market over its rival MasterCard. By taking over the official status from its competitor, Visa hopes its brand will be the dominant one in people’s minds before, during and after the World Cup.

2. Assert market leadership
Leading brand Coke is also using its official FIFA partner status in an attempt to dominate its second-place rival, Pepsi. It wants to use the tournament to drive home its global “open happiness” marketing mantra, by developing a World Cup campaign around the theme.

The drinks brand says it has never been more committed to a tournament. “It’s definitely the largest campaign we’ve ever implemented around the world,” says Emmanuel Seuge, group director for worldwide sports and entertainment marketing at Coca-Cola.

It has been working on owning the celebration of a goal and is running programmes on the digital side to encourage people to upload their celebrations onto YouTube. This is also reflected in a global television ad.

3. Make a message global
Seuge adds the World Cup is an event that unites people and suits a brand that operates on a global scale. “Wherever you are in the world, the passion for football is all about connection, celebration and happiness – and that’s what our brand stands for.”

While each territory will have a local element to the campaign, showing local people celebrating goals, the World Cup association is where the opportunity lies to really act as a global brand, says Seuge.

In a Forrester report, “Create an Adaptive Global Organisation”, the author Steven Noble says brands must look for opportunities that reinforce their strengths in multiple markets: “Brands must harness the strength that comes from their global reach,” he says. Seuge adds that the World Cup is how his brand is able to use its strength as a brand leader to get its marketing messages across to football fans and increase its presence in developing countries.

In an interview with Marketing Week last year, Coke chief marketing and commercial officer Joseph Tripodi said events like the World Cup can put Coke’s business on a “different trajectory globally”, just like the money it invested in the Beijing Olympic Games transformed its business there.

Anheuser-Busch InBev is also planning to dominate its sector around the world through leveraging the opportunity of the South African tournament. Its vice-president of global connections Maarten L Albarda considers the Budweiser World Cup affiliation as its best opportunity to dominate multiple markets. “The World Cup is our biggest global property, both in scale and importance. In terms of consumer passion, it is unrivalled.”

The brand has been associated with the World Cup for more than two decades, but it will be the first tournament that Budweiser will operate under the merged AB InBev. Budweiser marketing director for Western Europe James Watson says that now the beer brand is part of a bigger company, there will be “much more of a global focus than has been seen before.”

This international focus has resulted in “very positive brand equity shifts already”, claims Watson. He expects brand measurement to show further uplift as the competition progresses.

But Space’s Atkinson doubts whether the American beer brand can really be seen as the global beer leader of the World Cup. He suggests: “The connection was obvious when the tournament was held in the US, but I can think of other beer brands that would be better suited to this official association.”

Atkinson believes that it is difficult for a brand like Budweiser to convincingly communicate a global message, when other beer brands dominate certain territories. “Carlsberg, for example, is far more successful at engaging with England fans, with its ‘official beer of the England team’ status. It’s convincing because it uses this football association in everything that it does,” he says.

4. Build a digital empire
Other research suggests that if companies associate with large-scale sporting events it can have a dramatic effect on their brand online as well as offline. Many brands associating with this year’s FIFA World Cup are investing heavily on digital marketing (see Strategy: Build A Digital Empire, below, for details on how some brands are using the online space). Experian has carried out some analysis on how brands using digital platforms are viewed by consumers. Experian Marketing services managing director Jim Hodgkins says:

“Sponsorship of international sports events, such as the World Cup, can make a huge difference to customer engagement online. A successful sponsorship campaign can make the brand synonymous with the success of the event or team.”

Adidas, which was the official kit sponsor of Team GB at the last Olympics had the highest level of searches online that year for the four weeks’ duration of Beijing 2008, according to Experian’s analysis. Traffic to Puma’s Usain Bolt “Race Bolt” online game shot up, says Hodgkins, the day Bolt won the gold in the 200 metre sprint, breaking the world record at the same time. Those brands which are clever in the digital space in this year’s World Cup could have a similar level of success on a global scale, he suggests.

The brands that focus on the fans around the world will be more likely to benefit from their multi-million-pound investment, says Space’s Atkinson. “Brands need to be careful not to make it too corporate,” he warns. Those which make it less about the game and more about their business risk damaging their reputation on a global scale.

5. Evolve the business
Research carried out by Space in the last World Cup in Germany noted that those brands which demonstrated “they were there for the fans” benefited from “brand love”, whereas those brands which didn’t risked the wrath of fans, who were left wondering why the brand had a presence at the tournament. Nationwide, for example, was seen by fans as helpful during the tournament. The banking brand offered travel assistance and help sorting out accommodation. However, Hyundai’s association bewildered some fans, who wondered why the car company was trying to sell cars when they were trying to watch the matches.

Atkinson says companies have to work hard to become convincing “football brands”. He points to Castrol, which he says has become a football brand even though it only committed to football in a big way for Euro 2008. Castrol vice-president of global marketing Polly Flinn agrees that her business’ wide-ranging programme is designed to show that the lubricants brand has moved into the football space in “a credible way because of the official assoc iation with FIFA” (see Castrol case study).

6. Promote, promote, promote
Billington Cartmell managing director Jason Nicholas says that World Cup sponsors have to “demonstrate their association with football in a compelling way”. But, he argues, brands don’t have to operate on an official or global scale to benefit from this year’s World Cup. The agency works with brands that have official association with the England Team and those businesses that want to capitalise on the football frenzy without investing millions of pounds. “McCoy’s crisps can play in this space, for instance, because they are positioned as man crisps”. The snack brand has created two flavours for the tournament – Sausage Striker and Chicken Winger – along with a competition called “Are You A Real Fan?”. Prizes include football trips around the world.

Meanwhile, supermarkets are trying to win the hearts and minds of football-loving shoppers with football-themed promotions in a bid to increase footfall during the summer months. Billington Cartmell is working with Morrisons on its 2018 bid association. Morrisons has just launched a trading card promotion (see Tesco case study) in competition with Tesco’s Match Attax trading card promotion, which launched earlier this month.

Supermarkets will be battling hard to be the supermarket choice over the coming months. The British Retail Consortium estimates that the last World Cup benefitted UK retailers to the tune of £1bn, and grocery stores are lining up to benefit from the sales uplift from this one.

But the official sponsors and partners believe they can benefit greatly on a global scale with their official association with football. Space’s Atkinson says whichever strategy a brand follows, “it will resonate more with consumers if it is closer to the stuff they love”. And those global sponsors will be working hard to bring fans closer to the game in an attempt to be the most loved brands of this year’s World Cup.

This article was first published on marketingweek.co.uk

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