Wednesday 16 July 2014

Lessons for marketers from the recently concluded FIFA World Cup 2014.

It was just a few days back when all of us (at least the guys at my hostel) used to be glued to the Television sets in the common room. These guys are a bunch of football fanatics who used to stay up till late night so as to watch the FIFA World Cup 2014. I also stayed up for a few games (not all, b’coz I pursue a hobby called sleeping).

The recently concluded tournament was loaded with special moments and some interesting events which caught the eye of the people all over the world.

Some of these events also caught the eye of marketers around the world (including me). It was really interesting to note how companies and businesses around the world rose up to the occasion and tweaked their campaigns to reach out to their customers during the tournament.

The infamous “bite” by Uruguayan and Liverpool star Suarez was one of the events which many brands around the world leveraged. Marketing techniques were tweaks, ad campaigns were changed, some of the major brands also bombarded the timelines of their followers on social networking sites Twitter and Facebook.

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Soon after the incident the brand “Listerine” the world renowned mouth wash tweeted the following post.

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Apart from Listerine, Bud Light also tried to leverage the moment and tweeted a picture showing a person biting their bottle’s cap.

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Both these tweets were part of the #PowerToYourMouth campaign.

Other companies like McDonald’s and Snickers also tried to make the most of the moment.

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There were some negative reactions as well

The official sponsor of the Fifa World Cup, Adidas who had signed up Suarez as the Global Brand Ambassadors of the World Cup immediately reacted to the incidence by sacking Suarez from its world campaign.  Adidas also showed their support for the four month ban which was imposed on Suarez by FIFA.

This is a perfect example of how brands nowadays can remain alert in order to save themselves from the negative impact of such occurrences.


Some of the brands such as Unilever, even changed their strategy completely. These brands dropped their conventional rigid promotional campaigns so as to make use of real time data from the sporting event for connecting with football fans all around the world through Twitter.

*Please share this post with your peers (peer to peer marketing, you see :P) through the social networks given on the left. Also keep your comments coming in. Many thanks.*





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