Back at the start June we said… It’s finally here… FIFA World Cup 2010! and in the blink of an eye and a toot of a vuvuzela, it’s over. Congratulations to Spain! (and apologies to our colleague Elia Fernandez who received some slagging after Spain’s first round defeat. Felicitaciones España)
At The Printed Image we started our build up to the world cup as far back as last October with our structural designers and graphic designers working on a number of World Cup 2010 campaigns for multiple retail channels. The challenges were wide and varied from supermarkets to the smaller convenience stores and beyond. The brilliantly decked out off-licences certainly convinced me to buy a few extra slabs of beer! We also had some fun with our own Staff World Cup Sweeps, which was designed in house. We sent the Staff World Cup Sweeps kit to all our clients and received some great feedback on design and the concept.
Further afield, with the World Cup having a cumulative worldwide TV audience of 1 billion (FIFA Stat) not surprisingly marketing mania took hold. Despite the many claims that the vuvuzela made an unbearable racket, Sainsbury’s in the UK took a punt and ordered a stock 75,000. Good call…the 140 decibel horn sold out in a matter of days. Other opportunists sold Vuvuzela ear plugs outside the Stadia in South Africa. Some of the more wacky items on sale were voodoo dolls with five pins and the national emblems of all your enemy teams or toilet paper with World Cup trivia!
On a larger stage there were some epic marketing campaigns. In a move to shut out it’s main competitor Nike, Adidas paid $200 million to be named the official corporate partner for all World Cup events in South Africa. Locked out of ads during the World Cup, Nike adopted some guerrilla marketing to get exposure taking a viral and digital route. Most impressive was Nike’s ‘Write Your Headline.’ (as part of the Write the Future campaign) Each night fans were able to submit personal messages via Facebook or Twitter and the best 100 entries were displayed on the Johannesburg’s Life Center Tower.
It may be finally over but with FIFA’s audience statistics and the selling power of the World Cup, the marketeers are no doubt already planning the next epic campaign for Brazil 2014.
Can’t wait!
Garry.