Voodoo marketing is happening in South African soccer

Derek Carstens, the Head of Marketing for the Local Organizing Committee of the 2010 World Cup and The Fifa Confederations Cup in South Africa, is demonstrating a brand of marketing that I have never seen before. I call it voodoo marketing because it seems that our 2010 marketers are expecting their marketing plans – that is if they have the plans in the first place – to implement themselves.

I watched Derek Carstens being interviewed on the Woza 2010 programme when the IPL cricket tournament was in full swing in South Africa. He said that at the time the IPL had the emotional highground in advertising terms. Then he admitted that the IPL had been an unexpected competitor for a share of the ears, eyes and minds of the consumers and so the LOC marketers had not seen them coming.

He then said that they had then decided to sit back until the IPL tournament ended and then start FIFA Confederations Cup promotions once the IPL hype had fizzled out. Then LOC would flood all the mediums with a barrage of marketing collateral. Guess what, the IPL has come, conquered and gone, yet we have not yet been bombarded with, more urgently, FIFA Confederations Cup promotions despite the fact that we are a couple of weeks from this prestigious tournament.

Do the LOC marketers expect these marketing communications to happen by magic? This is what I call voodoo marketing. Everything else seems to be on point – the stadium construction and upgrades, the telecoms infrastructure, the road construction projects – everything else is on track except for the marketing, and more specifically marketing communications, and the areas it directly affects like the ticket sales.

The most recent update reported that approximately 400 000 tickets have been sold out of the 600 000 plus that are available – that’s roughly 60% with two or so weeks until the start of the FIFA Confederations Cup. Again the assumption is that South African supporters will at the last minute buy up all the tickets staying true to the ‘African way’ of doing things at the last minute. This is voodoo marketing.

The LOC marketers should have solved this marketing problem way back by devising marketing strategies to change local soccer fans’ attitudes towards buying tickets. If they had commissioned research to find out what South Africans ticket buying behaviour was when we won the bid to host the tournament 3 years ago they would have known things they stumbled upon just recently when the tickets were not moving.

They have demonstrated a lack of knowledge of their target market. Maybe we should get the IPL Cricket marketing brains and get rid of our voodoo LOC marketers.