The World Cup is an opportunity for many leading brands to exploit the football fever gripping the world with captivating and often expensive adverts, and this year is no exception. Both Nike and Pepsi have invested heavily in advertising schemes this World Cup, each hiring a plethora of international football stars to promote their brands.
However, BrandIndex shows the two brands faring rather differently in the immediate wake of the new schemes. Nike first showed its new epic-style advert during the Champions League final on 22nd May, when its ‘Attention’ score, a simple measure of how many consumers have heard something about a brand, stood at 22.8. On 7th June, four days before the World Cup kicked off, this had risen to 29.8. Pepsi’s ‘Attention’ score, on the other hand, currently stands at 13.4, little more than the average of 11.7 for the April-May period. With this year’s wave of ultra-expensive advertising schemes showing mixed fortunes for big brands, it will be interesting to see whether anyone is discouraged from jumping on board in four years time at the next World Cup.
