Euro 2020 cliches; The role of the airport in football ad history; Faux jeopardy; Cantona's valuable shrug; Matalan's half-arsed ambush; Betting by numbers; Cowboy myths; Pat Jennings revisited
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Just link it to the footy. A guide to Euro 202(1) marketing
Marketers lose their minds around a big football event.
Some sort of cultural FOMO kicks in. First prize to the Advertising Standards Authority’s guide, ‘Keep a clean sheet with our Euro 2020 marketing tips’
Contains the sentence:
The ASA may not be able to resort to VAR, but they do take into account the overall impression provided by the copy, including text, images, icons and symbols
Matalan’s half-arsed gun jumping email strategy
On the morning of the England Denmark semi, the Spanish clothes shop chain put out a thrillingly ‘data driven’ release, prematurely looking ahead to an England Italy final.
All a bit previous imho. Not to mention, it takes quite a bit of digging to find out why Matalan would want to associate with the Euros in the first place.
China, and the search for faux jeopardy in a sponsorship story
The second paragraph of a news story is sometimes referred to as the nut graf, because it contains the ‘kernel’ of the story. The first line, or lede, is designed to lure you in. The second or third para is where the journalist is asking you to care enough to read further. (An aside: my theory is the popularity of ambush marketing stories among the trade press stems from journalists seeking to add jeopardy in the nut graf).
Note the BBC’s Technology reporter’s attempt to build tension in to a piece on the Euros.
But almost every time I saw a sponsored brand on the digital billboards that run the circumference of the pitch at Wembley, there appeared to be a Chinese super-brand logo on display.
Further down, a juicy half volley is served up, which the unnamed UEFA/TEAM voice dispatches with relish.
Tournament organiser Uefa told the BBC it had "no specific strategy" regarding Chinese collaborations. "However, we do look to engage a global audience, as do the brands who join our commercial programme," it added.
Gambling’s games within games
There’s a subplot to this year’s tournament, as the 2019 whistle-to-whistle ban on betting ads takes root. The two sides - pro and anti gambling lobbyists - are throwing data at the issue.
Gambling With Lives upped the pressure on ITV to extend the ban to England’s later stage games.
“Given that nearly 21 million people watched England vs Ukraine on Saturday, it is no exaggeration to state that millions of children will be tuning in to see their heroes before, during and after this semi-final. Therefore we are requesting that ITV suspend gambling advertising for the duration of the broadcast of England v Denmark on 7 July, and not just within the whistle-to-whistle timeframe.”
ITV say 85 betting ads appeared on ITV and ITV4 during the Euro 2020 group stages – 47% less than the 161 betting adverts shown on the same channels during the group stage of the last World Cup three years ago. This works out to be 3.7 ads per live match compared to 6.9 in 2018.
Michael Dugher, propagandist for the Betting and Gaming Council is fond of the cause and effect route, straight from the tobacco playbook.
“At the start of the tournament, we had the same siren voices from the usual suspects in the anti-gambling lobby making dire warnings about people being ‘bombarded’ with betting ads and calling for a ban. I’m pleased that calls from prohibitionists to ban TV betting ads are baseless and not backed up by the evidence, with the Government themselves also acknowledging that independent research ‘did not establish a causal link between exposure to advertising and the development of problem gambling’.
Anyone know the source of that government quote, btw?
Beer by numbers
A frequency analysis of beer brand references around the last Euros in 2016 is due an update after this tournament:
A total of 2213 alcohol marketing references were recorded, an average of 122.94 per broadcast and 0.65 per broadcast minute (0.52 per minute in-play and 0.80 per minute out-of-play). Almost all references were visual (97.5%), with 77.9% occurring around the pitch border. Almost all (90.6%) were indirect references to alcohol brands (e.g., references to well-known slogans), compared to only 9.4% direct references to brands (e.g., brand names).
ClicheWatch: The role of the airport
Qatar Airways 2021 v Nike 1998
Not to be confused with Ronaldo’s own attempts at airport-based personal branding four years later, in the arrivals hall for the Japan Korea 2022 World Cup.
The Cantona shrug, 22 years in the creation
Might be wrong, but that 1998 Nike airport ad feels like the world premiere of the French player’s trademark facial expression, which he’s been milking ever since.
Nike 2018:
Here’s something deconstructing the phrase ‘Gallic shrug’. Turns out it says more about English people than it does the French.
And the winner is…
Italy assistant coach Alberico Evani in Giorgio Armani has set a high benchmark for the official tailor category.
Well, just look at him. He looks like a Milanese tailor. Or a watchmaker seen through that TikTok Pixar filter. He should be in a piazza in Rome drinking Campari and tutting, not doing anything as vulgar as setting up a training session or telling a defender where to stand on a patch of grass.
And The Times writer Ben Machell won tweet of the tournament:
Creative Whiteboard Hall of Fame
There’s an argument to be made that football-based advertising peaked in 1974.
The Brief: Create magic with the following elements.
Unipart oil filters; the Spurs and Arsenal goalkeeper Pat Jennings…and er, that’s it.
See also: Pat Jennings v Tony the Tiger.
Category of the Week: Cowboy hats
Endeavour’s Professional Bull Riders franchise landed a new sponsor this week.
Just another sports rights deal or does it perpetuate a flawed and romanticised version of American history in which ‘the cowboy represent the ideal of individualist freedom pushed into a sort of inescapable jail by the closing of the frontier and the coming of the big corporations’.
See also: According to scholars, one in four cowboys working in Texas during the golden age of westward expansion was black; many others were Mexican, mestizo, or Native American—a far more diverse group than Hollywood stereotypes of the cowboy would suggest.
Unofficial Archive
UP Episode 6: Rory Sutherland
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