FIFA WorldCup 2010 - The Marketing Game Begins !!

FIFA WorldCup is the biggest global sporting event followed by millions across 200 countries, so probably the best brand to talk about in our Brand Of the Week segment. The sponsorships are hard faught for this mega event but, only a few get to eat the pie.
But, the bigger challenge than getting the sponsorship right is to be able to utillize it completely. In this context, Brandistics gives you the Big 5 rules of the game (marketing with FIFA WorldCup) that helps marketers/sponsers design the gameplan

1. Marketers get a huge field to play on i.e. the success of their campaign depends on how they ideate non-traditional promotions (other than traditional print, television etc..). The more innovatie and engaging campaign, the higher the brand recall achieved. So, it depends on the skills of the marketer if he is able to do the tricks with the ball and impress the audience.

2. Huge Target Market : The marketers get to capture all the segments as according to the top three most-cited TV viewing habits: "mostly watched with friends and family," - not only soccer crazy audience but also their pals get targeted
"watched even if my national team was not playing," - the non-playing nations get targeted
and "liked watching other players from other nations competing" - the national brand ambassadors are now global brand ambassadors for example, Indians like Cristiano Ronaldo rip through England defence to score a goal, Castrol the brand association of Ronaldo gets to target Indian market.

3. The goals are defined - According to the FIFA framework for sponsorship they are categorized under 3 levels:

4. Localization matters : Blending the local culture into your campaigns is important. This how you get more association to the bigger game, that is, when worldcup comes to Africa get all the celebration, dancing, noise into your campaigns.This gives an insight of how closely your brand is associated to FIFA WorldCup ,which has been an important consideration for audience to elevate the brand's image.

5. The final rule says follow the 4 rules stated above .period

FIFA 2010 Sponsorship - Importance to USA, Germany, India, China, Japan and South Korea

FIFA 2010 is on, and Brandistics is trying its best to report on the World Cup, whether it comes to the schedule or the betting odds (see widget at the top). But considering that we are a sports marketing blog, my attention on FIFA 2010 has involved the sponsors to the FIFA 2010 World Cup, more than a lot of things.

Figure this:

FIFA Sponsorship can be broken down into FIFA event partners and international sponsors apart from the local sponsors. Considering that the local sponsors should be belonging to the African continent, we decided to find out which countries do the other sponsors belong to. It is a huge event after all, the returns on this investment for the companies, might as well make or break them.

FIFA Partner	Home Country
Adidas	Germany
Coca Cola	USA
Emirates	UAE
Hyundai Kia	South Korea
Sony	Japan
Visa	USA

FIFA WC Sponsor	Home Country
Budweiser	Germany
Castrol	UK
Continental	Germany
McDonald's	USA
MTN	South Africa
Mahindra Satyam	India (Yeah!)
Seara	Brazil
Yingli Solar	China

Now, you see what I meant with the title. USA has got 3 companies, Germany has got 3 companies, UAE, China, Brazil, India, South Africa, UK, South Korea, Japan have each 1 company. Certainly, FIFA World Cup 2010 is more important to these countries than the other ones like Argentina or Spain who are poised to fight hard this World Cup!

South Africa 2010-Fifa Football World Cup Match Schedule Time Table

Looking at the immense popularity gained by Fifa World Cup 2010, we at Brandistics have thought to present our readers with the schedule of the matches on a weekly basis.

Here is the schedule of the matches being played from June 11 to June 20...


June 11 - Friday
07.30pm – South Africa Vs Mexico – Johannesburg (SC)

June 12 - Saturday
12.00am – Uruguay Vs France – Cape Townr
05.00pm – South Korea Vs Greece – Johannesburg (SC)
07.30pm – Argentina Vs Nigeria – Port Elizabeth (Ellis)

June 13 - Sunday
12.00am – England Vs USA – Rustenburg
05.00pm – Algeria Vs Slovenia – Polokwane
07.30pm – Serbia Vs Ghana – Pretoria

June 14 - Monday
12.00am – Germany Vs Australia – Durban
05.00pm – Netherlands Vs Denmark – Johannesburg (SC)
07.30pm – Japan Vs Cameroon – Bloemfontein

June 15 - Tuesday
12.00am – Italy Vs Paraguay – Cape Town
05.00pm – New Zealand Vs Slovakia – Rustenburg
07.30pm – Ivory Coast Vs Portugal – Port Elizabeth

June 16 - Wednesday
12.00am – Brazil Vs North Korea – Johannesburg (Ellis)
05.00pm – Honduras Vs Chile – Nelspruit
07.30pm – Spain Vs Switzerland – Durban

June 17 - Thursday
12.00am – South Africa Vs Uruguay – Pretoria
05.00pm – Argentina Vs South Korea – Johannesburg (SC)
07.30pm – Greece Vs Nigeria – Bloemfontein

June 18 - Friday
12.00am – France Vs Mexico – Polokwane
05.00pm – Germany Vs Serbia – Port Elizabeth
07.30pm – Slovenia Vs USA – Johannesburg (Ellis)

June 19 - Saturday
12.00am – England Vs Algeria – Cape Town
05.00pm – Netherlands Vs Japan – Durban
07.30pm – Ghana Vs Australia – Rustenburg

June 20 - Sunday
12.00am – Cameroon Vs Denmark – Pretoria
05.00pm – Slovakia Vs Paraguay – Bloemfontein
07.30pm – Italy Vs New Zealand – Nelspruit

Football in India

The idea to write this post came into my mind when I was having a look at different groups of the World cup. I was really overwhelmed with a patriotic feeling and found myself wondering on the fact that, how is it possible that a country with population of over 1 Billion cannot produce 11 world class football player.

The primary reasons being:

• The first thing which struck me was the lack of infrastructure in our country. I tried to compare the number of cricket grounds to the number of football grounds present in our country and believe me the ratio was as low as it could get.
  
• Having left heartbroken from the government's side I turned towards the corporate India. I found out that the craze for football is immense in the corporate world. The Big Cats have already selected their sides and are backing them, but I was not able to find any answer as to why not even a single company is coming forward to sponsor our Indian Football team. I am not against Hockey or our Indian Hockey team but even they have got a loyal sponsor in form of Sahara, no matter how they perform.
  
• Then I turned towards the common man or the mango people or the aam aadmi of India and found that the following which cricket has in India is far more than that of football, but somehow I was not able to find good enough reasons to blame them because they buy what they see and at present the visibility of football in India is as low as it can get in a country like India.
• The improper functioning of the organization handling football in India is also a factor for such a pathetic condition of a beautiful game like football in our country. Consider the recent case of the Indian coach Bob Houghton, the organization did not had money to pay for the hike in salary requested by him.
  

But saying that Fifa will never be able to make into India and draw a significant amount of audience towards it will be totally wrong. Infact it has already started to form a grip on the Indian markets. Many Indian companies are launching their products in Fifa World cup instead of launching it long back in IPL season 3. The reason being that Fifa provides a global audience as against IPL.

Now I will be listing some of the factors which will play a significant role in laying a strong foundation for football in India. Who knows once we get a good enough fan base in our country we might be able to get a team who can qualify for the world cup.

• 20-20 cricket format has changed the preference of people to the shorter version of different games. Football is one such game which is getting an advantage due to this.
  
• Rise of sports marketing in India with the advent of large scale events like IPL. Who knows in future a major corporate house bids for the sponsorship of our football team. That day will change the way football is treated by the Indian masses.
• The Youth. Yes I am talking about you, me and the others who are in their late teens or early twenties. I have seen an immense following for football in these people. And I can bet you on this that they will act as a major driver for the upcoming of football in India. That time is not far when India will be having its own Ronney, Ronaldo and Messi.

There is hardly any reason as to why football will remain out of our focus for long. The driving factors are far more than the restraints and challenges faced by it. So lets wait and watch....

"With a little less than 36 hrs for the World cup to kick off, the excitement level in the Fifa fans is really worth seeing. I along with my team members at Brandistics will be supporting this mega event, with a wish in our hearts to see the Indian Flag flying high in the Fifa World Cup 2014."

"May the Best Team Wins" - (our apologies to all the die hard fans of different teams)

Stay tuned as Brandistics takes on the Fifa World Cup 2010...

Brand Ronaldo - CR9

CR9 is the trademark for brand Cristiano Ronaldo, an aggressive,talented,furious young footballer from Portugal who rose to be a 94 million euro player brand (as at brandistics we treat players as brands).A brand with such exuberant soccer skills and popularity across the world that he gained mainly with his association to world's best football clubs, an opportunity that few football talents achieve made him the most valuable player in the club history. This was exactly the thought put behind the unprecedented purchase done by Real President Florentino Perez ,his major objective was to increase the club's revenue and its brand value which could only be done by buying in the best of the existing brands and surely Ronaldo was one.

As a result, Real Madrid jumped up to no.2 from no.5 on the media brand list of advertisers (research done by University of Navarra's Economics, Sport and Intangibles Research Group who assigned 83 pts to Real Madrid based on their analysis, leading the list was Barcelona FC with 96.6 pts)and Real Madrid had taken over from Barcelona and Manchester United in some key markets, especially in South America, where the English club was no longer the leader in any country.Also,The sale of Ronaldo to Real had contributed to United losing their position of dominance in 13 out of 21 countries in which they were previously number one, including the United States, China, Brazil and Portugal.

The CR9 label has been created by Real Madrid for the promotional activities of the club as they position their brand asset in promotions pertaining aggression, youth , success, skills, and the hero who is now a soccer icon for a lot of markets around the world. This helps brands like Nike, Castrol and Pepe Jeans to position their products with this brand personality. Apart, from being a fierce footballer he is also very talked about amongst the girls so that helps brands like Emporio Armani and Clear Shampoo to position their products for the young machos. This has contributed to Real Madrid being regarded as the most profitable short term success in the media industry is and a valuable proposition to associate their brands to. Now,what else lies in the box will be revealed in the FIFA World Cup 2010 as it is a great opportunity for marketers to promote their products in the Portuguese markets, target the Portugal supporters worldwide and obviously the player's huge fan following.

And maybe this was the point in time from where it all begin.

"After we played Sporting last week the lads in the dressing room talked about him constantly, and on the plane back from the game they urged me to sign him. That's how highly they rated him!"
-Sir Alex Ferguson on C. Ronaldo