Euro 2008 kicks off this weekend without England or Scotland, but clichéd commentaries about lower fan interest and less brand activity miss the point that for brand marketers who use football, there are still valuable lessons to be learned from the tournament – many of which couldn’t be learned if the home teams had qualified.By the same token, ambush activity will also be thrown into higher relief, whether big, bold and obviously strategic such as the Mars ‘Get Britain Playing’ campaign or Burger King’s ‘Football Your Way’, to the tactical, such as Heineken’s new, and very funny, press work – although we suspect that UEFA and tournament sponsor Carlsberg will be less than amused given Heineken’s status as a UEFA Champions League sponsor.
Finally, let’s not forget that Euro 2008 will do quite nicely without the home teams. Every one of the 1.05 million match tickets has been sold – albeit only 33 per cent direct to the fans – and in football terms it will be as good as it gets: the 2006 World Cup Final was between France and Italy.
From fan consumption across a variety of channels for example, we’ll discover how many fans here love football no matter who’s playing, as distinct from those who, as Martin Samuel put it recently in The Times, are in love not with football but with:
‘a St George’s Cross [on] the car aerial, buying the new red England shirt and joining the gang for a month.’
Tournament sponsors, many of them brands with long term football agendas, will also gain a much clearer perspective on how powerfully their campaigns cut through to the hardcore fan audience, undiluted either by the casual St George’s Cross fan or the blizzard of ambush campaigns that would normally accompany a big tournament featuring the home teams.
By Tim Crow on June 6th, 2008
Tags: Ambush campaign, Brand marketing, Euro 2008, Football
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