Hangers On

I’m a football fan, but in many ways I can’t wait for this year’s World Cup to be over. Obviously part of that is because England will be crowned champions having beaten Germany on penalties in the final… Sorry, getting delusional again.

Firstly I can’t wait for it to be over so I don’t have to put up with hour-by-hour updates on Rooney’s metatarsal or tedious and uninspiring interviews with the “exciting” Theo Walcott.

More importantly, I can’t wait to see the back of football-related adverts everywhere. It’s bad enough to watch the Brazil team kick a ball around their dressing room, but at least that is for a football-related product. However, most of the sponsors of the tournament have nothing to do with football – the Gillette advert stands out as being particularly nauseous on that count.

What is even worse than the official sponsors (who have paid considerable amounts to be associated with the tournament) are the “hangers-on.” Every two years (at Euro or World Cup time), companies put out football-related adverts but without mentioning the World Cup. MG Rover did it with a horrible advert in which MGs played football in a car park. However even worse is on screen this time round, especially Dominos Pizza.

In the Dominos advert a couple of “lads” argue about who loves footy more – it escalates from who goes to away games or has a season ticket (pretty reasonable claims to liking the game) to the near climax of who has a Dominos Football Fanatic Pizza. Eh?! Am I missing something? Should I actually express my love of football by eating pizza??? No, this isn’t the ultimate though – the ultimate football fan hilariously has Michael Owen locked in a cupboard… Right.

Is paying to be an official sponsor worth it? Well it is if you are going to mention the World Cup anyway – just ask TNT who have been stung recently. However, research shows that Coca-Cola have a mere 13% unprompted awareness of their World Cup connections – and they have the highest. If only 1 in 10 people know that Coke are linked with the World Cup then why bother?

The answer is that they gain subliminal brand promotion – every time you watch a game you will see the Coke logo. Like any sponsorship, it is hard to measure effectiveness – you can measure brand exposure, but does it actually make a difference. Coca-Cola know about marketing, so you can bet that they think it does… But don’t worry Coca-Cola, we know that you couldn’t really give a monkeys about us – just check out their World Cup website and see if you can find the England / UK page (everyone else is on it http://www.football.icoke.com/#)

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