It’s that time of year again – summer is fast approaching, a World Cup awaits and England fans are preparing themselves for another crushing, if entirely expected, disappointment.
As Russia braces itself for the start of the tournament on 14 June, companies worldwide have been looking for ways to link their products to the wider spectacle or the fortunes of a specific national team. This year, marketers have been keen to stress the additional challenges they face, with Russia’s current international standing and fears of hooliganism presenting a tough proposition. And yet, the increased exposure and attention generated by using something as simple as a football-themed pack can undoubtedly reap rewards.
Perhaps it is a sign of the British public’s lower expectations of the Three Lions at this year’s tournament that the UK’s leading produce brands appear to be steering clear of backing the England team. Florette, for example, has decided against a repeat of the England Three Lions salad bag it released for the 2010 World Cup in South Africa. Lidl, however, continues to show its support for Gareth Southgate’s squad as the official supermarket of English football.
World Cup fever
On the continent, meanwhile, several major brands are limbering up to claim a share of the marketing spoils. Belgian cooperative BelOrta, with its branded ranges, is launching two products to tie in with this year’s tournament. The first is a pack of snacking tomatoes designed in the style of the Belgian national team shirt – a product that was first aired during the 2016 European Football Championships.
“It was very successful,” recalls marketing manager Sofie Lambrecht. “We offered the product through just one Belgian retailer and saw our sales double in the five weeks of the promotion. If you link a healthy product to football, people will buy it.”
This year, the product will be on the shelves of every retailer in the country. “The size of the promotion is much bigger this time,” she says. “The product will be in shops for five weeks from 4 June.”
In addition, BelOrta is launching a reusable microwaveable bowl for snack vegetables. “The bowl itself is green like the grass and covered in footballs,” reveals Lambrecht. “The bowl does not feature any specific references to the World Cup, allowing it to be used for football-related promotions in the future.”
Elsewhere in Belgium, cooperative Hoogstraten is launching a specially designed bucket for snacking tomatoes, to be sold through Belgian retailer Colruyt. Through Carrefour in Belgium, consumers of some of Hoogstraten’s specialty tomatoes can also collect Panini stickers of the Belgian football team, while at German supermarket Rewe, the supplier is launching a pack for snacking tomatoes in the shape of a football.
Keeping it local
Closer to home, Irish banana giant Fyffes may not be muscling in on the World Cup action but it has long been involved in marketing its brand through the beautiful game, preferring to emphasise the company’s local roots in Dundalk. From providing bananas for the training sessions to becoming the club’s shirt sponsor, Fyffes has been supporting Dundalk FC for over half a century.
“As a company whose roots and heart are in Dundalk, Fyffes has tremendous pride in seeing the club go from strength to strength,” says the brand’s sales and marketing manager Emma Hunt-Duffy. “The Fyffes brand is huge in Europe and we delighted in seeing Dundalk FC wear it on their shirts during their historic Europa League campaign in 2016.” Their success helped to grow Fyffes’ profile, with a rise in Google searches of the brand name when key matches were televised internationally.
The Irish brand also produced a three-part series of short online videos telling the story of the football club. This attracted a gross audience of over one million viewers across YouTube, Facebook, Twitter and various sports websites within weeks of the final instalment going live. “It brought our brand further recognition in Iceland, Holland, Poland and Russia,” says Hunt-Duffy, “the last of which is seeing quite a rise in Fyffes sales.”
A ‘natural fit’
Fyffes’ sales and marketing manager sees linking fresh produce to sport as a “natural fit” and an important way of promoting healthy eating, combating obesity and encouraging an active lifestyle. What is more, it gives the brand a perfect opportunity to appeal to a broad demographic of consumers: “Sport appeals to men and women, young and old, and therefore provides a platform for us to communicate our brand values with a wide target audience,” she says.
Across the border in Northern Ireland prepared vegetable brand Mash Direct stresses that sport has a “much clearer link” to fresh produce and other healthy foods than it does to “some of the companies that have traditionally been related with the events”. Fast-food chains, sugary drinks, beer and confectionery continue to dominate sports sponsorship. Fifa’s official partners and World Cup sponsors include McDonald’s, Coca-Cola and Budweiser, while the FA’s include Mars, Carlsberg and soft drinks brand Big Cola.
Looking to shake things up, Mash Direct advertised pitchside at the Ireland vs Scotland Six Nations rugby fixture last year. “In the grocery industry, it is important for vegetables to stand out in all the noise,” says the company’s director Jack Hamilton. “Sugary drinks and impulse buys dominate sports coverage so it was an opportunity to stand out and do something different.”
Switching it up
When it comes to doing things differently, Avocados from Mexico’s Super Bowl adverts arguably take the award. In February, for the fourth year running, the Mexican industry’s marketing arm aired another light-hearted advert during the match between the New England Patriots and the Philadelphia Eagles. The 30-second spot imagined a domed utopia called GuacWorld, with free massages, calming music and limitless supplies of guacamole. But the perfection is pierced by an urgent question: “Where are the chips?”
When the chips are spotted outside the dome, violence and chaos ensues, only for calm to be restored by the revelation that avocados and guacamole are also great on toast and in burgers, salads and tacos. But then someone moans that the wifi is down and all hell breaks loose once more.
Fresh produce brand development expert Tunde Daczo of Storm Strategy says the playful advert, which reached an estimated 100 million Super Bowl viewers, is one of the best examples of sports-related fresh produce marketing she’s come across.
Another unorthodox marketing approach was taken by apple brand Kanzi, which earlier this year sponsored American competitor Matt Johnson in some hair-raising Red Bull Crashed Ice events. The extreme sport, which was created by the energy drinks company, is similar to ski cross but with skates on ice instead of skis on snow. Competitors race down an ice track full of jumps, drops and steep banks at speeds of up to 50mph, and Johnson did just that in an ice hockey-style Kanzi apple jersey.
The brand also partnered with a retailer in neighbouring Minneapolis in January, giving shoppers a chance to win a VIP experience at a Crashed Ice event in St. Paul, Minnesota. The retailer reported a mammoth surge in revenue after the competition, with sales increases of almost 1,500 per cent on Kanzi bulk apples, 875 per cent on 2lb bags of conventional Kanzis, and nearly 300 per cent on 2lb bags of organic.
Sport for charity
Leaving extreme sports to one side, another approach has been to link fruit and vegetable brands to charitable events and campaigns that involve sport. As well as positioning a product as an important part of a healthy lifestyle, this has the added benefit of boosting a brand’s image of being socially responsible. For many consumers, it is important to feel that a company is ‘doing its bit’ rather than just raking in the profits.
After 12 years of involvement with the London Marathon, the UK’s best-selling fresh produce brand, Pink Lady, is now well known for its marketing activity around the event. Over that period it has evolved its London Marathon campaign, recently working with a number of digital influencers and charities that promote marathon content via their social media channels.
In addition, a handful of people run the marathon on behalf of the brand each year in support of a chosen charity. In 2018, working closely with six participants from running club Beginners2Runners, Pink Lady created videos for Facebook, Instagram and the Pink Lady website, as well as working with lifestyle bloggers who broadcasted live content on the day of the event.
Social media is not the only way to drum up brand awareness at a charity event, however, with Albert Bartlett opting to support this year’s Sport Relief by donating 5p for every promotional bag of Rooster potatoes sold. The company also created a number of sporting initiatives to encourage its consumers and staff to get involved with the fundraising.
The likes of Michelin star chef Michel Roux Jr. and champion jockey AP McCoy backed the campaign in a series of adverts. And Roux was also part of the brand’s ‘Coach Potato’ team of chefs who were responsible for creating four potato-based recipes for the Albert Bartlett website. “Our message is that potatoes are healthy and full of energy and nutrients, provided you cook them and serve them as part of a balanced diet,” says the brand’s head of marketing Michael Jarvis. “It was a very positive brand association with a well-known and non-controversial charity.”
Image problems
Not all sports campaigns and events are so free from controversy, however, and brands arguably have more to lose than gain by associating themselves with certain events. The Beijing Games, Sochi’s Winter Olympics and Brazil’s back-to-back World Cup and Olympics were all marred by various scandals, leaving marketing departments to weigh the benefits of reaching an audience of billions against the risk of doing lasting damage to a brand’s reputation.
The upcoming World Cup in Russia is another case in point, with reports emerging last year that Fifa was struggling to find new commercial partners due to the financial cost and reputational risk involved. So far just 14 companies have signed up as sponsors for the tournament in Russia compared to 20 for the World Cup in Brazil. With Fifa emerging from a corruption scandal and Russia at loggerheads with the west since it annexed Crimea in 2014, it’s not hard to see why companies might fear for their image.
Monster sponsorship deals like these may be out of reach for most of the world’s fresh produce companies, but other ways of linking a brand to a sporting occasion or team can also prove problematic. Daczo makes the point that even mega brands have contrasting views on whether it’s worth linking their company to a controversial or politicised event.
“There are two arguments here,” she says. “On the one hand, you shouldn’t miss an opportunity to engage with a huge number of people, but on the other, it’s important to stay true to your brand.” Daczo thinks the latter is ultimately of greater value, reminding companies that in the end “people will remember what you do, not what you say.”
In a similar vein, the brands specialist says it is vital that both the event and its participants “share and reflect the values of your company and products”. However she is clear that, generally speaking, a greater focus should be placed on marketing fresh produce and healthy food through sport. “Sport events are a great choice for marketing fresh produce,” she says. “Along with the opportunity to engage with a large number of people, sport and fresh produce can deliver a common message: healthy lifestyle, longer life and an opportunity to spend quality time with your friends and family.”
With just two weeks until the World Cup gets under way in Moscow, it remains to be seen whether brands linked to the tournament will benefit sufficiently from positive messages like these, or wish they’d distanced themselves from a tournament shrouded in controversy before a ball has even been kicked.
