Win the 2010 FIFA World Cup for Your Brand (I)

Kola Amodu-

The successive success of the FIFA World Cup is like a purple crystal absorbing various energies and synergy into colorful light. The event has been managed successfully with support from different organizations and personnel besides sports people. As a mega hallmark event, the FIFA World Cup with billions of people as audience has mirrored the explosive growth of media, entertainment and tourism.
Football has always been an interesting proposition. The pre event euphoria to the 2010 World Cup in South Africa is attesting to it as the flavour of the moment; it is cool as well as very, very powerful. Sponsorship of the World Cup is for the big brands that can leverage the massive inventory of benefits on a global scale. If sponsorship is the acquisition of passions, the World Cup is about as passionate as you can wish.
The 2002 FIFA World Cup, held in Korea and Japan attracted a cumulative television audience of over 41 billion spectators. According to Sports Business of May 2002, the fee for the TV broadcasting right was 8 times over, compared with the 1998 Paris World Cup, culminating in $789 million. The direct economic impact of this soccer fever exceeded $30 billion (10.2 billion in Korea; 25.8 billion in Japan). The positive economic impacts reward the host cities, corporations and nations according to their measure of investments.
The 2010 tournament in South Africa is already a record earner for FIFA with $3.1-billion in sponsorship deals secured by last year. In the period between 2003 and 2007, which included the last tournament in Germany, FIFA earned $1.8-billion from sponsorships.
One cannot but realize that meticulous approach played out over time is important to building an effective World Cup sponsorship. Given the size of the investment made by the official partners and sponsors, it is not surprising that their strategies are often worked out over a four-year period. On the average, FIFA sponsors pay £22m-£30m or more yearly. Add the marketing money allocated to leverage the tie-up, which most times are over the original sponsorship fee. That gives a fair idea of the vast resultant expenditure.
The majority of the World Cup sponsorships are paid for by global budgets and supplemented by local leverage budgets. In Nigeria, brands are already jostling to be associated with the ‘beautiful game’, thanks to the last gasp qualification by Super Eagles. It is a safe bet that sponsors will get a very satisfactory ROI.
So important has the event become to marketing that preparations for the tournament have reached unparalleled heights. For many of these brands, working on World Cup strategies is a job that never stops.
Once through with the activation for one tournament, Coca-Cola makes a start on its learning and how to make the next one better. Once this knowledge is reapplied to the strategic plan, it is time to start activating it again. The fact that the brand has a long-term agreement in place with FIFA allows for such smooth operations, and certainly helps to raise the bar creatively and with improved returns.
Experienced FIFA sponsors now employ dedicated World Cup teams as sub-divisions of the marketing department, working on the strategy on a rolling basis. This enables the brand to seamlessly integrate its knowledge and feedback from previous campaigns into the next, making each World Cup a stronger marketing proposition.
Integrated Concept
For many FIFA 2010 sponsors, it is not just the strategic thinking that requires a lengthy lead time, but maximizing the use of sponsorship rights across all parts of the business and putting in place consumer-engaging promotions and affinity marketing deals. Starting on time is important because there are a lot more opportunities now than at previous tournaments, time is needed to fully exploit avenues.
Integration is the watchword here. Marketing experience in sponsorship activations over the years have proven that the best way to make brand association (with the World Cup) deliver is to ensure not only that it is prevalent in every piece of communication with the consumer, but also that it adds value to the relationship. This may not be an easy task for a company like Adidas, which needs to go beyond just putting a FIFA logo on everything. Now the challenge is bringing the association to life in a unique way. True integration here clearly needs strategic planning to create a central theme to work from.
According to Antonio Zeas, Adidas director of soccer, 2009 has been a tough economic year for many companies; Adidas will thus want to focus more on 2010. Revenues from this 2010 World Cup is aimed at delivering record numbers for the brand, better than in 2006, and to extend its leadership.
To be continued