As the FIFA World Cup 2010 gets underway in South Africa, it is amazing to see how marketing is having a massive impact. Just looking at the adverts between games on ITV and other ad carrying channels shows just how much thought has gone into maximising sales impacts during this football festival.
Carling brilliantly tailored their ‘lost in the desert’ ads from the water being delivered to the reading of the latest World Cup scores (including England’s disappointing draw with the US). Just minutes after the final whistle! Then finished by showing a ‘connection’ with the audience by referencing the Belgium scores. I like many other ‘proper’ football fans quickly shouted our superior knowledge at the screen, after all Belgium haven’t qualified for this tournament. But we shouldn’t have been so quick to doubt, as the ‘punchline’ quickly resolves as one of the characters points this out (after his Camel riding friend has headed back again to get his mate the Belgium score).
Mars has taken the involvement a stage further by repackaging their core product in a St Georges wrapper. Though I do hope they haven’t forgotten the ‘distribution’ aspect of this strategy! After all, I’m not sure how well sales will go outside of England. The blatant tribute to World in Motion video and the Barnes rap all generate nostalgic memories of Italia ’90 and our best World Cup performance since ’66.
These are just a couple of examples of some well planned and well executed marketing campaigns that any business can learn from.
Contrast this with a pub food menu that caught my eye on the night of the England game. They proudly declared you could now buy the 1966 Burger Special for £5.99. So in what way was that a 1966 special? The burger wasn’t made in 1966 (I’m positive), it didn’t come with Charlton’s Chips or even Moore drinks. It didn’t cost £1.966 or £19.66 or even £10.66 (though we are now into a different area altogether). So I still fail to see why it was anything other than a burger deal for £5.99!!! Extremely poor execution.
At a time when many businesses are trying to use World Cup references to boost sales, it is often a good idea to look at things in a slightly different way. After all, everyone knows the World Cup is on. So perhaps by getting away from the blatant references and looking slightly different at things, any business can get a welcome boost from the competition…well as long as the England performances get better.
