This headline is not as obvious as it seems. Yes, generally speaking there will be promotional opportunities for official sponsors and licensed suppliers and guerilla marketers. But this is not what I am talking about. Let me explain. The World Cup will be an opportunity for South Africa to have ‘captive’ in our shores the best teams in the world with the best players in the world.
This is a chance for our FMCG brands which would normally not be able to afford a Cristiano Ronaldo to be able to do so if the marketers are clever, but they must plan well ahead. The best example I can think of is what Simba Chips did with the former Brazilian ace Romario when he came with the Brazilian National team for a game against Bafana Bafana at Ellis Park (Now Coca-Cola Park). The Simba marketers approached Romario with a very simple but clever script which was very easy to shoot.
Intrigued by the script, Romario agreed to do the commercial for a much reduced fee. The commercial shows Romario leaving the stadium after a game, supposedly, in his civilian clothes. He spots a little kid eating from a paket of Simba Chips. He can’t resist the chips and he tries to swap his jersey for the chips and the kid refuses.
Ultimately he ends up giving the kid a whole lot of his valuable gear just to get that one packet of Simba Chips. Naomi Campbell did the same thing when she came here for her first visit. Sales House approached her to star in their campaign and as a favour to Nelson Mandela she gave her services to this South African brand at rates well below what she normally charged. So the opportunity is there for all our marketers to cash in on these stars at the 2010 World Cup.
Since the soccer megastars will already be in the country there will not be the exorbitant costs of flying the stars in to the country first-class and putting them up in 5-star accommodation. All our marketers have to do is to show them a stunning script and if they are sold on the concept work around their schedule to produce the advert or promotional material.
So our marketers have to put their thinking caps on now, do their research to see which of the star-players do not endorse a brand in the same category as theirs and get cracking on coming up with clever ideas. There will probably never be another opportunity like this in South Africa in our lifetimes.
It doesn’t have to be a concept for an advert it can be any other promotional idea that is clever, simple-to-produce and intriguing to the superstar player. So I say to all South African brands, put your thinking caps on and bring on those ideas for the good of your brands and our economy.
Nowadays companies spend a fortune for marketing. They think that their product will be a success only by marketing, but I would say, let your product speak. If the product is good, then naturally the product will be a hit by word of mouth.