That sound of thunder you have heard echoing across the globe these last few weeks comes from the biggest sporting event on the planet. No, it's not the bowling playoffs. Not Tiger Woods at the Masters, either. It's soccer's World Cup.
 Just how big is it? Well, a cumulative 50 billion television viewers will tune in during the tournament, a figure that comfortably outstrips the Olympic Games. The World Cup will create 350,000 jobs in South Korea and could give Japan a $25 billion economic boost. Across Western Europe, where games are screened before lunchtime, employers fearing an exodus of their workforces, have been forced to screen all the important matches live. Imagine the cost in industrial downtime alone!
After decades of obsessive interest in Europe and South America, this is arguably history's first truly global World Cup, which is why the choice of Japan and Korea as co-hosts is so significant. Bringing the World Cup to Asia for the first time is no happy accident; it is a clear-headed economic and political strategy on behalf of FIFA, the international soccer association.
They recognize that in a global marketplace, over the long-term, soccer is locked into fraternal warfare against American sports. Asia, of course, represents a huge opportunity that, unlike the Western countries, has yet to declare its allegiance firmly for one camp or the other. And while baseball has long been the most popular team sport in Japan, the frenzy occasioned by this competition may just be enough to tip the balance back in soccer's favour.
Reversing the usual flow of ideas (social, technological, cultural) from America to the rest of the world, soccer is overwhelmingly the world's favourite team sport, but one which Americans have long struggled to take seriously. Despite an impressive performance by the American team, interest in the US has been largely confined to sharply defined ethnic urban communities -- Hispanic, Italian, Irish, Polish, Senegalese.
The game's exotic appeal has been instrumental in its being taken up in some trendy New York circles. However, mainstream American opinion has been better represented by the correspondent of the Cleveland Plain Dealer, who forced himself to watch half a game in a spirit of scientific enquiry, before condemning soccer as the ultimate sporting sedative. It probably hasn't helped that the games, US-time, have been staged in the middle of the night. It has helped even less that none of the networks was bold enough to take it on.
If Americans struggle to take soccer seriously as sport, they should have no trouble taking the World Cup seriously as business.
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But if Americans struggle to take soccer seriously as sport, they should have no trouble taking the World Cup seriously as business. With so many enraptured viewers, especially those so-difficult-to-reach young males, 'footie' is a dream for the international marketeer.
And brands have not been slow to pick up on its potential. Just as there are successful and unsuccessful teams, it is instructive to sort brands into winners and losers. There is a great deal of debate about the real value of official involvement. Many believe that while
the exposure to advertising during a World Cup might be huge, the effect of being, say, 'Official Credit Card' is tiny. But with an event that delivers such audience numbers can any brand with global pretensions afford not to take the risk?
Marketing in the World Cup does not work in the same way as its closest American equivalent -- the Super Bowl. Where the Super Bowl is rightly seen as a showcase for the advertising industry -- an occasion where, it is fairly said, the ads can overshadow in interest what is happening on the field - -the World Cup is a whole month, not an evening, of festivities. Even the ads around the final game itself don't work in quite the same way, with two, 45-minute halves of uninterrupted action -- anathema to the average American program director.
It becomes less important, therefore, for soccer marketers to deliver the killer 30- or 60-second spot than to somehow contribute to the atmosphere of carnival that surrounds the event. The World Cup is a marathon, not a sprint. And in soccer-mad countries everyone tries to get in on the act, from the more obvious high-spending high-end goods (cars) to games console and pet food manufacturers.
It is estimated that in Italy, a nation as soccer-mad as they come, five out of every six TV commercials across the month of June will be soccer-themed. Even countries that failed to qualify are caught up in the hype. In the Netherlands, the current campaign for the leading
supermarket features the coach of the Dutch national team enjoying his barbeque (the joke being, he's got nothing better to do this summer).
Coke has gained credibility by not pretending to be anything that its not.
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Soccer fans pride themselves on their ability to sort the brands they trust from those that appear to be coasting on an easy involvement with the event or -- worse -- their own beloved team. There will be little credit given by ardent fans to the car manufacturer whose high-profile campaign claims: "we love the love the game as much as you do."
On the other hand, and perhaps surprisingly, American brands tend to do well here. Coke has gained credibility by not pretending to be anything that its not -- a drink which, because of its universality, can be found being drunk by ordinary supporters at every match. Nikehas managed to maintain a high profile amongst fans by deliberately avoiding official involvement, presenting itself as the rebel outsider that is true to the game's street-level roots.
So, the World Cup is a breathtaking festival that once every four years, drives brands and marketers almost as crazy as the fans themselves. Love it, hate it, but don't ignore it. The venue for the 2010 event? South Africa. Again, that is no coincidence for a game aggressive in its pursuit of world domination.
Scott Goodson is co-founder and creative partner of StrawberryFrog, an independent ad agency that specializes in building brands for international clients from its office in Amsterdam. Since its launch in March 1999, StrawberryFrog has worked on multi-country assignments for Levi Strauss & Co., Sprint, Nokia, Pfizer, United Pan Communications, Credit Suisse, Ford Motor Co., Microsoft Corp., Smart Car, Xerox and Motorola. Special thanks to Steffan Olander, brand director of Nike Europe, and Gavin MacDonald, StrawberryFrog's head of strategic planning, for help in preparing this essay.
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