Could sponsors hold the key to stopping racism on the terraces?

So Lance Armstrong (under)stated recently that he’d had a ‘difficult couple of weeks’.

Just to recap. In the last fortnight or so (and despite his protestations of innocence), Armstrong has gone from being a much lauded athlete who overcame serious illness to dominate one of the world’s toughest sporting competitions to a discredited drugs cheat and stripped of all his titles.

A ‘difficult couple of weeks’ by anyone’s standards.

Since the evidence against him grew and former team-mates spoke out about his role in the doping culture in the US Postal team, the position of sponsors such as Nike has shifted. Where initially they stood by their man, they ultimately decided to cut the relationship, citing that he had “participated in doping and misled Nike for more than a decade“.

It’s one of the inherent dangers of sponsorship.

While your endorsee is sweeping all before them you are associated with success and glory. But as Tiger Woods sponsors found out a few years ago, if that star misbehaves your brand is associated with someone getting the headlines for all the wrong reasons.

The news that cycling has/had a doping problem is both unsurprising and depressing.

Unfortunately, the same can also be said for the experiences of the England U21 side in their recent play-off in Serbia.

Racism in football

Having been subjected to racist chants throughout the game, things came to a head at the final whistle when Danny Rose was sent off for kicking the ball into the abusing crowd and punches were thrown as players and coaching staff jostled their way towards the dressing rooms.

Racism is a blight on society. It exists in the UK and while it is not tolerated in public arenas, the economic downturn hasn’t helped our natural tendency to tribalism when things are tough.

For nations that haven’t experienced the levels of immigration of other ‘races’ that the UK has, attitudes to people with different colour skin are not as liberal. Let’s not forget that it wasn’t all plain sailing and painless for us to get to where we are.

Terminology that was common just a couple of generations ago is now taboo. TV shows of the 1970’s wouldn’t even be considered now. And footballers in the UK used to have to run the gauntlet due to their skin colour as recently as the 80’s and indeed, incidents are still being reported in 2012.

None of this excuses what happened in Kruševac and nor does it excuse the lenient approach footballing authorities have taken with racist incidents in the past. In a multi-billion pound industry, fines of tens of thousands of pounds have little impact.

FIFA and UEFA are keen to cite the power of football to change society when awarding tournaments to countries like Ukraine and Qatar but plead impotence when it comes to topics like racism.

The natural indignation in England has lead some to suggest that we should pull out of international tournaments to make a point. Such an action would most likely be met with champagne corks popping in Nyon and Zurich, and would only serve to further dilute our voice in the global game.

The Serbian FA could have offered UEFA a get out of jail card. A statement recognising the monkey chants, apologising to the FA and footballing family and a clear plan of action to ensure it never happens again would have enabled the games rulers to give them a slap on the wrist.

Yet the Serbian FA refuted clear evidence of racist chants and stated that any claims to the contrary were malicious.

‘FA of Serbia absolutely refuses and denies that there were any occurrences of racism before and during the match at the stadium in Kruševac. Making connection between the seen incident – a fight between members of the two teams – and racism has absolutely no ground and we consider it to be a total malevolence.‘

Had they sent a letter saying ‘Fuck you! We did nothing wrong and we’re not changing!’ their attitude couldn’t be any clearer.

And in doing so they batted the ball firmly into UEFA’s court making the question very clear.

Do UEFA believe there was racism at the game and if so, do they consider it acceptable?

Driving behaviour change

Behaviour change and persuasion are all about understanding what motivates of the people you are trying to influence. This means putting your own motives to one side for a moment.

In other words, if we want UEFA and FIFA to impose stronger penalties for incidents of racism we need to understand what influences them.

And let’s be honest, British indignation has never kept them awake at night.

Much higher on the list of priorities are the many sponsors who provide a huge chunk of the money that powers the multi-billion pound football industry.

Just like Nike and Lance Armstrong’s sponsors, FIFA and UEFA’s backers (which include brands like Coca-Cola, McDonalds and Adidas) have a rare opportunity to make their opinion on an unsavoury topic clear.

No brand wants to be associated with racism and upsetting the sponsors is something the footballing authorities do not tolerate. Just ask Niklas Bendtner who was fined £80,000 for showing his Paddy Power lucky pants during EURO2012.

Compared to the fines given to national associations for incidents of racism, it seems rather excessive.

Let’s face it, for all the anger,  griping and T-Shirt protests in England we simply don’t have the clout to demand action.

The sponsors are the ones with real power to influence, and maybe only a rebuke from the people who line their pockets will make finally FIFA and UEFA start taking racism in football seriously.

The Pitfalls of Brand Personification

In a quest to be all things to all people, brands can sometimes lose their way. They become lost in a miasma of dilution as they try to stretch their brand equity to appeal to every consumer, or branch out into new markets. Some, like Virgin, have managed this fairly successfully – let’s forget for the moment about Virgin Brides – while others, such as Cisco (which we wrote about recently) have fared less well. Virgin’s equity relies in part on the man behind the company, Sir Richard Branson. His affable qualities have appealed to both consumers and investors. The balance he maintains is a delicate one, driving the essence of the brand without ever overwhelming it.

In the world of luxury, companies have often used brand ambassadors. The watchmaker Breguet has long claimed that luminaries such as Napoleon, Churchill and Marie Antoinette wore their brand. Each of these characters had their flaws of course, not least the megalomaniacal Frenchman. However, when the person personifying the brand is also at the rudder of the ship, the situation can prove more complex. This was evident in March this year when master designer John Galliano was fired from his creative directorship at Dior, as well as from his role at his eponymous label.

Similarly affected by ramifications at the top has been Lagardère Group, run by Arnaud Lagardère, who inherited the company from his father. As well as owning a range of media assets, it also has a 7.5% stake in the defence contracting firm EADS. Recently the 51 year-old has taken up with a 20 year-old model by the name of Jade. A cutesy video for a glossy magazine shoot made its way online (see below). Any semblance of dignity the man maintained – already in question prior to this video – was lost. This may decide future business directions at the company. Arnaud is a keen sports enthusiast, at one point mulling a bid for the rights to the Tour de France. Any such wishful thinking must now be considered just that as shareholders are keen to refocus on existing assets. His overt publicity has cost him dear; Arnaud may now be at risk of losing some of his control over the company. Writes The Economist,

“Executives at EADS are dismayed to see their future boss behave like a nincompoop. “In Germany any manager who shot such a video would be finished in business,” says a person close to the company.”

And so we turn to Apple, which has been recently hit with the news that Steve Jobs will be stepping down from his current role. He will remain at the company as chairman of the board, and his ideas and personality will affect the company’s direction for several years still, but after that the company’s direction, and its brand equity, will be at a crossroads. The company has, even relative to its own stellar performance, recently been enjoying great success, briefly becoming the world’s largest public company. In managing this feat, it overtook Exxon Mobil. As The Economist pointed out, however, “oil remains a vital raw material” (though not for a great deal longer, admittedly), whereas Apple’s appeal is in “delighting customers”. A company that serves such a fickle master so directly is in danger of losing said appeal at any given moment. Last week, an editorial in the FT pointed out that an Apple without Steve Jobs at the helm will be a less irascible but also a less happy place, and hence perhaps less appealing to customers. The New York Times echoed such sentiments that weekend, with an article headlined “For Apple fans, departure of Jobs is personal”,

“…[P]eople love Apple products in a way that they do not love other products they use every day. And Mr. Jobs as chief executive has been uniquely connected to Apple’s creations.”

The article details personal consumer reactions to the news, which range from tearful incredulity to concern over future business inspiration and product innovation.

All of which goes to show that having an impresario at the top can benefit a company hugely for decades. Could Steve Jobs have made Apple as popular, while taking a slight back seat, a la Bill Gates, Howard Stringer, Howard Schultz or Jack Welch? Probably not. If he had, Apple wouldn’t be the company it is today. But one thing’s for sure, what it is today will not be what it is in the future, when Jobs’ influence has left and the company has to decide which path to take.

Marketing Movies

At the height of summer, Hollywood can always be counted on to release its annual glut of rambunctious, noisy films for the gluttonous, rambunctious, noisy masses (read teenagers). Zeitgeist commented previously on the exceptional marketing efforts gone to by Disney and Pixar for “Toy Story 3”. The film was finally released the other week in the UK, having been pushed back to make way for the onslaught of the World Cup. This article will be focussing on four very different films and the differing marketing efforts employed in them; “Eclipse”, “Inception”, “Knight and Day” and “Tron: Legacy”.

The third film in the Twilight saga, “Eclipse”, has recently exploded into cinemas, making $280m in it’s first week at the global box office. In the film, Robert Pattinson’s ‘Edward’ drives around in a pining manner in a Volvo XC60 SUV. The car, owned by China’s Geely created their “most expensive campaign to date to promote its tie-in”, according to Variety. In the series’ sophomore outing Volvo had played on its product placement almost entirely online with their “Come and See What Drives Edward” campaign. In the new film there is another website, “Lost in Forks”, which is being more heavily promoted on TV in a cheesy, Americanised way (this is the ad Zeitgeist saw the other night). The site asks the user to play a game in order to be in with a chance of winning the XC60. The game, however, is interminably boring for all but the most dedicated of Twilight fans (who fortunately for Volvo number in the tens of millions); Zeitgeist lost all interest in entering the competition and having their information captured for Volvo to use in the future. Variety points out “the SUV is also being given away by Burger King as part of the chain’s own ‘Twilight’ tie-in and gives the vehicle a shout-out in its ads.” Even for the first film in the series, in which the Volvo C30 appeared but the brand had “no advertising budget”, the car “received millions of impressions [and] increased consumer traffic through [US] and international dealerships”. It helps that the author of the novels, Stephanie Meyer, had, bizarrely, sprinkled her books with mentions of Volvo.

Volvo took a back seat to Mercedes for product placement in Christopher Nolan’s “Inception”, the only product placement example in the film, writes BrandChannel. However, the film’s marketing has far more impressive accolades, namely its integration with Facebook. Although every brand and its uncle sees Facebook advertising as a sine qua non nowadays, the team at Warner Bros. created an imaginative and engaging campaign that helped raise awareness and excitement for a movie shrouded in secrecy. On the UK Facebook fan page for the film, competitions were announced that took place in Brighton, London and other locations. A man, suited and wearing sunglasses, and carrying the silver briefcase showcased in the film, appeared at various locations along with a vague clue or riddle as to where he was. The first person to solve the riddle and find the man was given tickets to the UK premiere. It’s an idea sui generis, and it evidently paid off. Apart from the film opening at No.1 and beating out “Toy Story 3” in its second week to retain its top spot, sometimes almost a hundred people would comment per competition when all was said and done. The great engagement continued in more simple ways when the film opened, with reviews posted from various publications, and asking fans whether they would be seeing the film again…

eConsultancy praised the efforts, saying they produced “a marketer’s dream campaign” (no pun intended I’m sure). The article details how Warner Bros. “went to great pains over its blog outreach campaign, utilising major and minor movie fan sites to help spread titbits of pre-release information.” They conclude with the pithy insight, “It’s worth contrasting this against that similar old media behemoth, the music industry, who have consistently struggled to find a new marketing model that competes with free sharing and piracy.”

All seemed not quite as rosy initially for the Tom Cruise / Cameron Diaz starrer “Knight and Day”, with the New York Times predicting before its release that it would fall short of expectations. The two stars, however, have gamely been showing their faces around the world, and not only at premieres, in this case touring Brazil before spending hours with fans in London. They also showed up at the Tour de France, watching from the side of the road before helping the eventual winner lift the trophy. Very soon the film will have it’s ‘People’s Premiere’ at London’s Somerset House, giving the film the added publicity of having two premieres. Finally, last week the duo showed up on the BBC’s “Top Gear”, driving the show’s ‘reasonably priced car’. The show is still available on iPlayer, and in Zeitgeist’s opinion well worth the watch. This kind of globe-trotting coverage is perfect fodder for the target audience, the kind who like big explosions, fast cars, and lean storylines.

The last film Zeitgeist will be discussing is the release this winter – December 17th in the US – of the second Tron film, “Tron: Legacy”, which, by the time it opens, Disney will have committed “three and a half years priming the audience” for, according to the New York Times. The team at Disney has – much like “Inception” did in a much shorter timeframe – been feeding rabid fans tidbits piece by piece, with the release of a new trailer (see below) at Comic-Con recently, where one arrived at the screening via a themed entryway, a great piece of experiential.

“Marketing campaigns for what the industry calls ‘tent-pole’ movies… have traditionally started about a year before their release in theaters [sic]. Increasingly, there is scarcely enough time… The goal is to make movies feel like must-attend events”.

Multi-channel integration, be it on Facebook as with “Inception” (and as with Disney’s newly purchased Playdom for $760m), through supporting Disney channels as with “Tron: Legacy”, or through mobile games that extend the movie’s universe, will help bolster revenues. However, as digital video recorders like Sky+ in the UK and TiVo in the US continue to erode film’s main piece of publicity – the trailer – and as DVD sales continue to plummet, without much offset from Blu-ray or online avenues, the film industry is increasingly less wary about taking risks when it comes to how films are promoted. One thing is for sure though, sometimes you just can’t beat a great trailer…