When there is a global audience of 5-billion people, brands will pay to reach them
Billboard central: Despite all the criticism of the Qatar World Cup, branding opportunities are simply too big to ignore. PICTURE: Christopher Pike/BloombergHuman rights groups are in uproar over everything from the treatment of LGBTQ people in a country where homosexuality is illegal to the deaths of construction workers building the stadiums. Organiser Fifa is recovering from corruption scandals that cast aspersions on how Qatar was awarded the competition to begin with.
Qatar 2022 is arguably the most scrutinised World Cup in history, and executives are faced with a dilemma as pundits and politicians raise concerns over the host country. Yet financially it’s a no-brainer: the potential to get hundreds of millions of eyeballs on a logo or marketing slogan during a troubled time for the global economy.
The economic slump, meanwhile, has prompted brands to curb their marketing. They will spend an estimated $90bn less on advertising this year and next than previously expected, according to data company WARC. To say it’s a normal World Cup for advertisers and sponsors would be wrong, though. Many brands backing the Danish, Belgian and Dutch teams said they were not going to make use of ticket allocations for matches.
The experience of British brewer BrewDog shows some of the pitfalls in trying to go the other way. The company decided to tap into some of the negative sentiment towards Qatar, running what it calls an “anti-World F*Cup” campaign. “First Russia, then Qatar. Can’t wait for North Korea,” runs one billboard. It also pledged to donate profit from one of its beers sold during the event to human rights charities.
Adidas CFO Harm Ohlmeyer told investors last week that he expects a “tailwind” of as much as €400m in sales related to the World Cup.
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