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The World Cup season is here, generating a fresh opportunity for brands to create new campaigns, communicate with new customers, and increase their exposure to get the biggest share of the pie. The main motive for striving to fit in the football fever is the fierce competition in the market, leading to a lower customer retention rate and lower footfall. Different strategies are being applied in this case. We see that big brands are applying a ‘hybrid’ strategy to be able to reach the right audience while other smaller brands adapt the ‘hit and run’ strategy which is not always successful.

The most important aspects implemented by brands to align with the World Cup are:

Short Term

Customization: no boundaries or limits to what the customer can do, give more freedom to customers to have a bespoke experience based on what they need on a short term basis (create the pizza of your choice, customize your TV channels, etc.)

Adaptation: going all the way with branding is a given, but most importantly, successful brands are redesigning their offering and experiences by adapting and creating new products (through LTOs: limited time offers) to match this occasion and which customers will appreciate and get attracted to try. For example Crepaway introduced new items on menu with customized flavors based on WC countries like German burger, Brazilian sandwich, etc.)

Incentivizing: is a major effective touch point that became essential to brands and world cup activities, however some brands are using incentives wrongly with mediocre communication. If not done wisely, they tend to mix brand message and confuse customers.

Long Term

Play on emotions through relevant and “up-to-the-minute” content to reinforce brand exposure and become top of mind choice -> Responding to an emotional need is key to building customer loyalty.

Data Collection: Brands and marketers are eager and focused on collecting data through the world cup activities, which will help them discover customer needs, then refine their target and be disciplined in the current and future approach.

In summary, most brands have allocated a big chunk of their marketing budget for this occasion.

The challenge remains regarding:

• Maximizing engagement with customers
• Keeping the same interest rate among them after the World Cup
• Benefiting from all activities and data collected to keep the flow going and transform new comers into loyal fans
• Identifying what’s next based on consumer behavior and needs through data collection