New And Exciting Attention-Getting Opportunities

Michael Hedges June 5, 2014 Follow on Twitter

In the great department store of life, said a commentator lost to memory years ago, sports is the toy department. This makes sports the perfect pitch for the advertising people. And the digital age has given them more toys. Everybody is very happy.

In just a week the 2014 FIFA World Cup in Brazil gets underway. It will be big. It will be colorful. The advertising people are ready. The 2010 FIFA World Cup in South Africa drew 3 billion television viewers worldwide over the thirty days, 750 million for the Spain v. Netherlands final. The Super Bowl in the US drew 112 million viewers this past winter.

A few days after the football kicks off, luminaries of the advertising world will gather in the Riviera sun for the annual Cannes Lions Festival of Creativity. In addition to the sun, beach and parties the ad people will be binging on new media. This year’s entries in the press (newspaper), radio and TV/film categories have fallen 12%, 10% and 9%, respectively, reported campaignlive.co.uk (May 29).

Big brand marketers have, by now, contracted all the big name stars of international football. Sportswear marketer Nike has, arguably, the biggest name, Real Madrid star Christiano Ronaldo. Nike released a four-minute World Cup ad with Ronaldo on April 25th, first on the web then, five days later, a shortened version on TV.

Online advertising for and around World Cup football will pull even with television ad spending, suggested eMarketer earlier this year. The ad spending advantage for and around the 2010 FIFA World Cup was five-to-one for TV. The ad people have taken notice. The Cannes Innovation Lions shortlist, released this week ahead of other categories, is a virtual delectus of attention-getting technology incomprehensible to all but the very learned. Making the list is Brazucam, the panoramic video HDTV-enabled Adidas official match ball of the 2014 FIFA World Cup currently on a world tour with the help of Los Angeles agency TBWA Chiat Day.

The undeniable World Cup advertising match-up is between rivals Nike and Adidas. Both have world-class creative teams producing extraordinarily expensive video to appear here, there and everywhere. Adidas has Argentinean footballer Lionel Messi in a 60-second ad that features original music from rapper Kanye West all put together by Brazilian super-director Fernando Meirelles.

Adidas is reportedly spending something above €60 million on world cup advertising, presumably including the football with the six little cameras inside. Its “All In or Nothing” spots are social media-enabled, a button prompts second-screeners to choose. The “All In” option automatically attaches to a fan list. “If consumers decide against joining Adidas and its FIFA World Cup communications, Adidas is happy to let them leave the team as it focuses on quality over quantity in its social media audience,” explained the company spokesperson, quoted by the Guardian (May 23).

Nike sponsors ten national football teams, including Brazil, one more than Adidas. Before the Nike/Ronaldo ad hit TV it had been seen 78 million times via YouTube and Facebook. “We’re almost at a point where it’s hard to calculate what is on television versus what’s on the web,” said Nike Brands president Trevor Edwards, quoted by Bloomberg (June 3). Every advertiser, ad agency and brand genius wants to connect with real people.

“The marketing of the World Cup has changed dramatically since 2010,” said Facebook’s global marketing VP Carolyn Everson to Bloomberg. “Four years ago the centerpiece was television. This is going to be a mobile World Cup.”

Those connections are supposed to bring in business, somehow, somewhere. Television advertising is far better at ringing up sales, suggested a UK study by Ebiquity/Thinkbox released last month. For each GBP invested in TV ads between 2011 and 2014 GBP 1.79 came back. Online display ads returned but GBP 0.37, far below radio at GBP 1.52.

UK daily The Guardian unleashed an ad for its World Cup coverage this week, appropriately tied to unsportsmanlike news. “Straight. Unbiased. We’d never get a job at Fifa,” said the headline.

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