Jumping on the Brazilian bandwagon

Sam’s favourite World Cup creative fails and why ultrashort-term disingenuous creative can actually do more harm than good.

Major international sporting events are an inherent part of the global sports culture and a huge part of all sports fans lives. They bring friends, family and nations together and give us all something to get behind. It’s natural that many brands want to be associated with The World Cup. Many genuinely are but many more couldn’t be less so. Does it matter? …Brandwave Creative Director, Sam Freeman certainly thinks it does!

A few days ago, I pulled in to fuel up my car at the local fuel station… Paying the bill in the shop was a highly traumatic, multi coloured, epilepsy inducing experience. Ok, that may be a little bit of an overstatement but I couldn’t help but noticing that a lot of product packaging has gone beyond ridiculous recently. Take a look at the confectionary stands or drinks chillers and see how many products are associating themselves with the World Cup. The bright Brazilian colours are plastered everywhere and many brands are linking themselves to something they have absolutely nothing to do with. It’s as if the marketing team have just run out of ideas and had some kinda creative meltdown: “I know, lets just paint everything yellow and green!”

Benefiting from the successes of a sport when you are generally recognised to be a supporter of it is great, and the more authentic brands deserve all of the additional sales that they get from it. Slapping the Brazilian flag on your product just for the sake of it is just plane lazy, creatively and conceptually, and I highly doubt it works.

Would World Cup branding on a Mars Bar make me want to buy it over my favourite unbranded quad-finger KitKat? Naaaa, just give me that KitKat!

So many brands have absolutely no association or heritage whatsoever with football or the World Cup. Do they really think we’re all that stupid? To say it’s brand damaging might be pushing it, but in a way, I think it is.

Your slack relation to a sporting event isn’t selling it to me, but your delicious sugary coating might do.

Bearing all of that in mind, here are my favourite 2014 Brazilian World Cup creative fails:

1. Krispy Kreme golden ball and football packaging

Talk about starting off strong. Krispy Kreme jumping on the band wagon with gold frosted football doughnuts and interactive packaging. Ok, I admit it, we did have fun playing with this one!