Singapore Entrepreneurs

Of course, everyone is in World Cup 2006 fever at the moment. The scores, the players, the teams and the sponsors are moving across worldwide on your TV screen. We want to examine how an interesting ad from Adidas in this event taps into different marketing strategies.

The World Cup 2006 fever has begun. If you have not noticed it by now, you are constantly bombarded by advertisements whether you are watching the football games or walking around shopping centres. The advertisements are well-designed and many companies are beginning to cash in for this premiere event once every four years. Sports generate revenue, be it Olympics, World Cup or even tennis grand slams. Even the local 4D store has started a football betting booth this time round. As long as you have a product related to World Cup 2006, be it a pair of Adidas sports shoes, a LG television (to allow you to view the match) or the MacDonald takeaway service (to deliver the food to your place), you can definitely harnass the wave to sell your product. Of course, the focus of this entry is really centered on the advertising and the marketing strategies behind them using Cialdini’s Influence framework, particularly, the ones done by Adidas. If you are now head over heels beyond world cup scorelines like “Germany 4 Costa Rica 2″, “England 1 Paraguay 0″, here is a short post talking about the advertising strategies people exploit for the World Cup 2006.

Let’s start with this one:

Let’s see how the few principles of influence used in marketing Adidas products with the World Cup 2006 wave:

• Liking: People prefer products to individuals they know and like. If you look at the poster for this ad, you will notice all the well-known and likeable football players on this poster. I can list a few, for example, David Beckham, Michael Ballack, Zinedine Zidane and Kaka. As a matter of fact, in the principle of liking, one feature that influences people to like other people is physical attractiveness. Strangely, I did not see Ronaldo in the picture. If you notice how the players were placed in the above picture, also notice that David Beckham is right in the centre of the picture frame. After all, he is the most handsome football player according to most women I know.

  The other strategy they did in this ad was the employment of using children’s innocence and imagination. Face it, we all liked children and how idealist they are. The two kids, Jose and his friend were innocent and they were looking for football players to start the game. They adopted the child’s innocence to create the most interesting football teams out of many players from different teams. When Jose’s mom called at the end of the ad, all the players on the whole football field disappeared.

• Authority: We like products that are endorsed by legitimate authorities that comes from systematic socialization practices designed to instill in members of society that such obedience constitutes correct conduct. The ad has brought in all the best players in the world to show that they endorsed the Adidas products. Of course, they did not just bring in modern players, but also “CGI” old and famous players, for example Bekenhauser, a Germany player who brought Germany the world cup in 1974.
• Social Proof: People use to decide on which products they buy by watching what others buy. Perhaps, you don’t see this one. Think about it. If your friend bought an Adidas brand shoes after watching the ad, what is the probability that you will buy the same set of high quality shoes used by world class footballers? If you add the fact that most people around the world other than the Americans like football, it is almost likely that they would like own the same pair of branded shoes like the rest. This is tapping into consumer behaviour that they always want things which others have.

Now that you realized some marketing strategies that you have seen in this ad, it might be good to look at the other ads, for example, MacDonalds, LG and also Tiger beer. Notice how they twist the ad using this world cup 2006 to bring your attention to their products.

References
[1]Cashing in on World Cup 2006 by Bjorn Lee
[2] R Cialdini, “Influence: Science & Practice”, Alvin and Bacon Press, ISBN: 0321011473
[3] Poster is from Adidas: http://www.adidas.com
[4] For a directory to different world cup blogs, check out Justin Lee’s article on World Cup blogs.

Technorati Tags: World Cup 2006, Adidas, Football, Advertising, Marketing, Branding

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